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THE 


Eighteen  Christian  Centuries. 


BY 


THE  KEY.  JAMES  WHITE, 

ACTHOR  OF  A  "  HISTORY  OF  FEANCE." 


Mitfe  a  C0pi0tts  |nlJt^. 


FROM  THE  SECOND  EDINBURGH  EDITION. 


NEW  YORK: 
D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY, 

1,  8,  AND  5  BOND  STilEET. 

1882. 


\A/5S 


•  •  •  t  ••  •  ( 

•      •         •   •      r      •« 


w^CA-J^ 


NOTE  BY  THE  AMERICAN  PUBLISHERS. 


This  valuable  work,  which  haa  been  received  with 
mach  favour  in  Great  Britain,  is  reprinted  without 
abridgment  from  the  second  Edinburgh  edition.  The 
lists  of  names  of  remarkable  persons  in  the  present 
issue  have  been  somewhat  enlarged,  and  additional 
dates  appended,  thereby  increasing  the  value  of  the 
book. 


ivi2294[54 


CONTENTS. 


FIRST  CENTURY. 

TBI   BAD   EMPERORS 


SECOND  CENTURY. 

THE  GOOD  EMPERORS 41 

THIRD  CENTURY. 

AHARCHY  AND  CONFUSION — GROWTH  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.       65 


FOURTH  CENTURY. 

THl:    REMOVAL  TO  CONSTANTINOPLE — ESTABLISHMENT  OF  CHRIS- 
TIANITY— APOSTASY  OF  JULIAN — SETTLEMENT  OF  THE  GOTHS...       82 


FIFTH  CENTURY. 

END  OF  THE    ROMAN   EMPIRE — FORMATION  OF  MODERN    STATES — 

GROWTH  OF  ECCLESIASTICAL  AUTHORITY 105 


SIXTH  CENTURY. 

BELISARIUS   AND   NAR8E3    IN   ITALY — SETTLEMENT   OF  THE    LOM- 
BARDS— ^lAWS  OF  JUSTINIAN — BIRTH  OF  MOHAMMED 128 


CONTENTS. 

I 


SEVENTH  CENTURY. 

POWXB  OF  BOMK  SUPPORTED  BT  THE  MONKS — CONQUESTS  OF  TQE 

MOHAMMEDANS 14) 


EIGHTH  CENTURY. 

TEMPORAL  POWER  OF  THE  POPES — THE  EMPIRE  Of  CHARLEMAGNE.    171 

NINTH  CENTURY. 

DISMEMBERMENT  OF  CHARLEMAGNE's  EMPIBE — DANISH  INVASION 

Of  XKOLAND — WEAKNESS  OF  FRANCE — REIGN  OF  ALFRED 193 

TENTH  CENTURY. 

nABKNESS  AKD  DESPAIR 219 

ELEVENTH  CENTURY. 

f  HE  COMMENCEMENT  Of  IMPBOVEMEFT— GREGORY  THE  SEVENTH— 
riBST  CRUSADE 241 

TWELFTH  CENTURY. 

BLIVATION     OP    LEARNING — POWER    OF    THE    CHURCH — THOMAS 
A-BECKETT 

THIRTEENTH  CENTURY. 

FIRST   CRUSADE   AGAINST   HERETICS — THE     ALBIGENSES — MAGNA 
CHARTA — EDWARD  I 

FOURTEENTH  CENTURY. 

ABOLITION  OF  THE    ORDER  OF  THE   TEMPLARS — RISE  OF  MODERN 
L1TXBATUBE8 — SCHISM  OF  THE  CHURCH 


2GS 


297 


326 


CONTENTS.  ^ 


FIFTEENTH  CENTURY. 

rAOM 

ttBCUHB  Of  FEUDAU8M— AOIJICOCaT— aOAH  Of  AEO — THl  PEINT- 
nO-nLBU — DIBCOVBKT  Of  AXSRIOA 859 


SIXTEENTH  CENTURY. 

TUB  KXfO&MATIOX— THB   JBSUITB-^TOUCT  Of  BI.ISABKTH 401 

SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

KOLISH  KBBBLLIOX  AXD  BBVOLUTIOX— DK8P0TI8M  Of  LOUIS  TUB 


FOCSTKB.XTH 


447 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

IBDIA — ^MBBICA — fEAXCB 491 

INDEX.. ^ f>27 


FIRST  CENTURY. 


} 


Augustus  Caesar. 

14.  Tiberius. 

37.  Caius  Caligula. 

41.  Claudius. 

54.  Nero.     First  Persecution  of  the  Christians. 

68.  Galea. 

69.  Otho. 

69.  VlTELLIUS. 

69.  Vespasian. 

79.  Titus. 

81.  DoMiTiAN.    Second  Persecution  of  the  Christians. 

96.  Nerva. 

98.  Trajan. 

LivY,  Ovid,  Tibullus,  Strabo,  Columella,  Quintus  Curtius, 
Seneca,  Lucan,  Petronius,  Silius  Italicus,  Pliny  the  Elder, 
Martial,  Quinctilian,  Tacitus. 

Barnabas,  Clement  of  Rome,  Hermas,  Ignatius,  Polycarp. 


THE 


EIGHTEEN  CHRISTIAN  CENTURIES. 


THE  FIKST   CENTUEY. 

THE   BAD   EMPERORS. 

Nobody  disputes  the  usefulness  of  History.  Manj 
prefer  it,  even  for  interest  and  amusement,  to  the  best 
novels  and  romances.  But  the  extent  of  time  over  which 
it  has  stretched  its  range  is  appalling  to  the  most  labo- 
rious of  readers.  And  as  History  is  growing  every  day, 
and  every  nation  is  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of 
memorable  events,  it  is  pitiable  to  contemplate  the  fate 
of  the  historic  student  a  hundred  years  hence.  He  is 
not  allowed  to  cut  off  at  one  end,  in  proportion  as  he  in- 
creases at  the  other.  He  is  not  allowed  to  forget  Marl- 
borough, in  consideration  of  his  accurate  acquaintance 
with  Wellington.  His  knowledge  of  the  career  of 
Napoleon  is  no  excuse  for  ignorance  of  Julius  Cajsar. 
All  must  be  retained — victories,  defeats — battles,  sieges 
— ^knights  in  armour,  soldiers  in  red;  the  charge  at 
Marathon,  the  struggle  at  Inkermann — all  these  things, 
a  thousand  other  things,  at  first  apparently  of  no  import- 
ance, but  growing  larger  and  larger  as  time  develops 
their  effects,  till  men  look  back  in  wonder  that  the  acorn 

escaped  their  notice  which  has  produced  such  a  majestic 

11 


1-  FIRST   CENTURY. 

oak, — a  thousand  other  things  still,  for  a  moment  rising 
in  ap|)arcntly  irresistible  power,  and  dying  off  aj^parently 
without  cause,  must  bo  folded  up  in  niches  of  the  memory, 
ready  to  be  brought  forth  w^hen  needed,  and  yet  room  bo 
left  for  the  future.  And  who  can  pretend  to  be  qualified 
for  so  great  a  work  ?  Most  of  us  confess  to  rather  dim 
recollections  of  things  occurring  in  our  own  time, — in 
our  own  country — in  our  own  parish;  and  some,  con- 
templating the  vast  expanse  of  human  history,  its  in- 
numerable windings  and  perplexing  variations,  are  in- 
clined to  give  it  up  in  despair,  and  have  a  sulky  sort  of 
gratification  in  determining  to  know  nothing,  since  they 
cannot  know  all.  All  kings,  they  say,  are  pretty  much 
alike,  and  whether  ho  is  called  John  in  England,  or  Louis 
in  France,  doesn't  make  much  difference.  Nobles  also 
are  as  similar  as  possible,  and  peoples  are  everywhere 
the  same.  Now,  this,  you  see,  though  it  ambitiously 
pretends  to  be  ignorance,  is,  in  fact,  something  infinitely 
worse.  It  is  false  knowledge.  It  might  be  very  injurious' 
to  liberty,  to  honour,  and  to  religion  itself,  if  this  wretched 
idea  were  to  become  common,  for  w^here  would  be  the 
inducement  to  noble  endeavour  ?  to  reform  of  abuses  ? 
to  purity  of  life  ?  Kings  and  nobles  and  peoples  are  not 
everywhere  the  same.  They  are  not  even  like  each 
other,  or  like  themselves  in  the  same  land  at  different 
periods.  They  are  in  a  perpetual  series,  not  only  of 
change,  but  of  contrast.  They  are  "variable  as  the  sea," 
— calm  and  turbulent,  brilliant  and  dark  by  turns.  And 
it  is  this  which  gives  us  the  only  chance  of  attaining 
clearness  and  distinctness  in  our  historic  views.  It  is  by 
dissimilarities  that  things  are  individualized  :  now,  how 
pleasant  it  would  be  if  we  could  simplify  and  strengthen 
our  recollections  of  different  times,  by  getting  per- 
sonal portraits,  as  it  were,  of  the  various  centuries,  so  as 
to  escape  the  danger  of  confounding  their  dress  or  fea* 


CENTURIES   DISTINGUISHED. 


13 


ftUrcs.  It  would  bo  impossible  in  that  case  to  mistako 
the  Spanish  hat  and  feather  of  the  sixteenth  century  fur 
the  steel  helmet  and  closed  vizor  of  the  fourteenth.  Wo 
should  be  able,  in  the  same  way,  to  distinguish  between 
the  modes  of  thought  and  principles  of  a(!tion  of  the 
early  ages,  and  those  of  the  present  time.  Wo  should 
be  able  to  point  out  anachronisms  of  feeling  and  manners 
if  they  occurred  in  the  course  of  our  reading,  as  well  as 
of  dress  and  language.  It  is  surely  worth  while,  there- 
fore, to  make  an  attempt  to  individualize  the  centuries, 
not  by  affixing  to  them  any  arbitrary  marks  of  one's 
own,  but  by  taking  notice  of  the  distinguishing  quality 
tUey  possess,  and  grouping  round  that,  as  a  centre,  the 
incidents  which  either  produce  this  characteristic  or  are 
pi*oduced  by  it.  What  should  we  call  the  present  cen- 
tury, for  instance?  We  should  at  once  name  it  the 
Century  of  Invention.  The  great  war  with  Napoleon 
ending  in  1815,  exciting  so  many  passions,  and  calling 
forth  such  energy,  was  but  the  natural  introduction  to 
tho  wider  efforts  and  amazing  progress  of  the  succeeding 
forty  years.  Battles  and  bulletins,  alliances  and  quarrels, 
ceased,  but  the  intellect  aroused  by  tho  struggle  dashed 
into  other  channels.  Commerce  spread  its  humanizing 
influences  over  hitherto  closed  and  unexplored  regions 
the  steamboat  and  railway  began  their  wondrous  career. 
The  lightning  was  trained  to  be  our  courier  in  the  electric 
telegraph,  and  the  sun  took  our  likenesses  in  the  daguer- 
reotype. How  changed  this  century  is  in  all  its  attri- 
butes and  tendencies  from  its  predecessor,  let  any  man 
judge  for  himself,  who  compares  tho  reigns  of  our  first 
Hanoverian  kings  with  that  of  our  gracious  queen. 

In  nothing,  indeed,  is  the  course  of  European  history 
so  remarkable  as  in  the  immense  differences  which  in- 
tervals of  a  few  years  introduce.  In  the  old  monarchies 
of  Asia,  time  and  the  world  seem  almost  to  stand  still 


'<  FIRST   CENTURY. 

The  Indian,  the  Arab,  the  Chinese  of  ii  thousand  yeaii 
ago,  wore  the  same  clothes,  thought  the  same  thoughts, 
and  led  the  same  life  as  his  successor  of  to-day.  But 
with  us  the  whole  character  of  a  people  is  changed  in  a 
lifetime.  In  a  few  years  we  arc  whirled  out  of  all  our  as- 
sociations. Names  perhaps  remain  unaltered,  but  the 
inner  life  is  different;  modes  of  living,  states  of  educa- 
tion, religious  sentiments,  great  national  events,  foreign 
wars,  or  deep  internal  struggles — all  leave  such  inefface- 
able marks  on  the  history  of  certain  periods,  that  their 
influence  can  be  traced  through  all  the  particulars  of  the 
time.  The  art  of  printing  can  be  followed,  on  its  first 
introduction,  into  the  recesses  of  private  life,  as  well  as 
in  the  intercourse  of  nations.  The  Reformation  of  re- 
ligion so  entirely  altered  the  relations  which  the  states 
of  the  world  bore  to  each  other,  that  it  may  be  said  to 
have  put  a  limit  between  old  history  and  new,  so  that 
human  character  itself  received  a  new  development;  and 
actions,  both  public  and  private,  were  regulated  by 
principles  hitherto  unknown. 

In  one  respect  all  the  past  centuries  are  alike, — ^that 
they  have  done  their  part  towards  the  formation  of  this. 
We  bear  the  impress,  at  this  hour,  of  the  great  thoughts 
and  high  aspirations,  the  struggles,  and  even  the  crimes, 
of  our  ancestral  ages ;  and  yet  they  have  no  greater  re- 
semblance to  the  present,  except  in  the  unchangeable 
characteristics  of  human  nature  itself,  than  the  remotest 
forefathers  in  a  long  line  of  ancestry,  whose  likenesses 
hang  in  the  galleries  of  our  hereditary  nobles,  bear  to  the 
existing  owner  of  title  and  estate.  The  ancestor  who 
fought  in  the  wars  of  the  Roses  has  a  very  different  ex- 
pression and  dress  from  the  other  ancestor  who  cheated 
and  lied  (politically,  of  course)  in  the  days  of  the  early 
Georges.  Yet  from  both  the  present  proprietor  is  de- 
scended.    He  retains  the  somewhat  rusty  armour  on  an 


CENTURIES   DISTINGUISHED.  J& 

dstentatious  nail  in  tho  hall,  and  the  somewhat  insincere 
memoirs  in  a  secret  drawer  in  the  library,  and  we  can- 
not  deny  that  ho  is  the  joint  production  of  the  courage 
of  the  warrior  and  the  duplicity  of  the  statesman  j 
anxious  to  defend  what  he  believes  to  be  the  right,  like 
the  supporter  of  York  or  Lancaster — but  trammelled 
by  the  ties  of  party,  like  the  patriot  of  Sir  Robert  Wal- 
pole. 

If  we  could  affix  to  each  century  as  characteristic  a 
presentment  as  those  portraits  do  of  the  steel-clad  hero 
of  Towton,  or  the  be-wiggcd,  be-buckled  courtier  of 
George  the  Second,  our  object  would  be  gained.  We 
should  see  a  whole  history  in  a  glance  at  a  century's 
face.  If  it  were  peculiarly  marked  by  nature  or  accident, 
so  much  the  more  easy  would  it  be  to  recognise  the  like- 
ness. If  the  century  was  a  warlike,  quarrelsome  centuiy, 
and  had  scars  across  its  brow ;  if  it  was  a  learned,  plod- 
ding century,  and  wore  spectacles  on  nose ;  if  it  was  a 
frivolous,  gay  century,  and  simpered  forever  behind 
bouquets  of  flowere,  or  tripped  on  fantastic  toe  with  a 
jewelled  rapier  at  its  side,  there  would  be  no  mistaking 
the  resemblance ;  there  would  also  be  no  chance  of  con- 
fusing the  actions :  the  legal  century  would  not  fight,  the 
dancing  century  would  not  depose  its  king. 

Taking  our  stand  at  the  beginning  of  our  era,  there 
are  only  eighteen  centuries  with  which  we  have  to  do, 
and  how  easily  any  of  us  get  acquainted  with  the  features 
and  expression  of  eighteen  of  our  friends !  Not  that  wo 
know  every  particular  of  their  birth  and  education,  oi 
can  enter  into  the  minute  parts  of  their  character  and 
feelings ;  but  we  soon  know  enough  of  them  to  distinguish 
them  from  each  other.  We  soon  can  say  of  which  of  the 
eighteen  such  or  such  an  action  or  opinion  is  charac- 
teristic. We  shall  not  mistake  tho  bold  deed  or  eloquent 
statement  of  one  as  proceeding  from  another. 


•^  FIRST   CENTURY. 

•'Boastful  and  rough,  your  first  son  is  a  squire. 
Tho  next  a  tradesman,  meek,  and  much  a  liar : 
Tom  struts  a  soldier,  open,  bold,  and  brave : 
Will  sneaks  a  scrivener,  an  exceeding  knave. 
Is  he  a  churchman  ?  then  he's  fond  of  power : 
A  Quaker?  sly:  a  Presbyterian?  sour: 
A  smart  free-thinker?  all  things  in  an  hour." 

Now,  though  it  is  impossible  to  put  the  characteristica 
of  a  whole  century  into  such  terse  and  powerful  language 
as  this,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  each  century,  or  con- 
siderable period,  has  its  prevailing  Thought, — a  thought 
which  it  works  out  in  almost  all  the  ramifications  of  its 
course ;  which  it  receives  from  its  predecessor  in  a  totally 
different  shape,  and  passes  on  to  its  successor  in  a  still 
more  altered  form.  Else  why  do  we  find  the  faith  of  one 
generation  the  ridicule  and  laughing-stock  of  the  next  ? 
How  did  knighthood  rise  into  the  heroic  regions  of 
chivalry,  and  then  sink  in  a  succeeding  period  into  the 
domain  of  burlesque  ?  How  did  aristocracy  in  one  age 
concentrate  into  kingship  in  another  ?  And  in  a  third, 
how  did  the  golden  ring  of  sovereignty  lose  its  con- 
trolling power,  and  republics  take  their  rise  ?  How  did 
the  reverence  of  Europe  settle  at  one  time  on  the  sword 
of  Edward  the  Third,  and  at  another  on  the  periwig  of 
Louis  the  Fourteenth  ?  These  and  similar  inquiries 
will  lead  us  to  the  real  principles  and  motive  forces  of  a 
particular  age,  as  they  distinguished  it  from  other  ages. 
We  shall  label  the  centuries,  as  it  were,  with  their 
characteristic  marks,  and  know  where  to  look  for 
thoughts  and  incidents  of  a  particular  class  and  tyjje. 

Let  us  look  at  the  first  century. 

Throughout  the  civilized  world  there  is  nothing  but 
Rome.  Under  whatever  form  of  government— under 
consuls,  or  triumvirs,  or  dictators — that  wonderful  city 
was  mistress  of  the  globe.  Her  internal  dissensions  had 
not  weakened   her    power.     While    her    streets   were 


BIRTH   OF  CHRIST.  H 

running  with  the  blood  of  her  citizens,  her  eagles  were 
flying  triumphant  in  Farther  Asia  and  on  the  Rhino 
Her  old  constitution  had  finally  died  off  almost  without 
a  blow,  and  unconsciously  the  people,  still  talking  of 
Gate  and  Brutus,  became  accustomed  to  the  yoke.  For 
seven-and-twenty  years  they  had  seen  all  the  power  oT 
the  state. concentrated  in  one  man;  but  the  names  of  the 
offices  of  which  their  ancestors  had  been  so  proud  were 
retained;  and  when  Octavius,  the  nephew  of  the  con- 
queror Julius  Cajsar,  placed  himself  above  the  law,  it  was 
only  by  uniting  in  his  own  person  all  the  authority 
which  the  law  had  created.  He  was  consul,  tribune, 
pnetor,  pontifex,  imperator, — whatever  denomination 
conferred  dignity  and  power;  and  by  the  legal  exercise 
of  all  these  trusts  he  had  no  rival  and  no  check.  He 
was  finally  presented  by  the  senate  with  the  lofty  title 
of  Augustus,  which  henceforth  had  a  mysterious  signifi- 
cance as  the  seal  of  imperial  greatness,  and  his  commands 
were  obeyed  without  a  murmur  from  the  Tigris  to  the 
Tyne.  But  whilst  in  the  enjoyment  of  this  pre-eminence, 
the  Eoman  emperor  was  unconscious  that  in  a  village 
of  Judea,  in  the  lowest  rank  of  life,  among  the  most 
contemned  tribe  of  his  dominions,  his  Master  was 
'  born.  By  this  event  the  whole  current  of  the 
world's  history  was  changed.  The  great  became  small 
and  the  small  great.  Eome  itself  ceased  to  bo  the  capital 
of  the  world,  for  men's  eyes  and  hearts,  when  the  won- 
derful story  came  to  be  known,  were  turned  to  Jeru- 
salem. From  her,  commissioned  enussaries  were  to  pro- 
ceed with  greater  powers  than  those  of  Eoman  prsetors 
or  governors.  From  her  gates  went  forth  Peter  and 
John  to  preach  the  gospel.  Down  her  steep  streets  rode 
Paul  and  his  companions,  breathing  anger  against  the 
Church,  and  ere  they  reached  Damascus,  behold,  the 
*»ye8  of  the  persecutor  are  blinded  with  lightning,  and 


18 


FIRST   CENTURY. 


his  understanding  illuminated  with  the  sam  e  flash ;  and 
henceforth  he  proceeds,  in  lowliness  and  humility,  to 
convey  to  others  the  glad  tidings  that  had  heen  revealed 
to  himself.  Away  in  all  directions,  but  all  radiating 
from  Jerusalem,  travelled  the  messengers  of  the  amaz- 
fng  dispensation.  Everywhere — in  all  centuries — in  all 
regions,  we  shall  encounter  the  results  of  their. ministry; 
and  as  we  watch  the  swelling  of  the  mighty  tide,  first 
of  Christian  faith  and  then  of  priestly  ambition,  which 
overspread  the  fairest  portions  of  the  globe,  we  shall 
wonder  more  and  more  at  the  apparent  powerlessness 
of  its  source,  and  at  the  vast  effects  for  good  and  evil 
which  it  has  produced  upon  mankind. 

What  were  they  doing  at  Eome  during  the  thirty- 
three  years  of  our  Saviour's  sojourn  upon  earth?  For 
the  first  fourteen  of  them  Augustus  was  gathering 
round  him  the  wits,  and  poets,  and  sages,  who  have 
made  his  reign  immortal.  After  that  date  his 
successor,  Tiberius,  built  up  by  stealthy  and  slow 
degrees  the  most  dreadful  tyranny  the  world  had  ever 
seen, — a  tyranny  the  results  of  which  lasted  long  after 
the  founders  of  it  had  expired.  For  from  this  period 
mankind  had  nothing  to  hope  but  from  the  bounty  of 
the  emperor.  It  is  humiliating  to  reflect  that  the  his- 
tory of  the  world  for  so  long  a  period  consists  of  the 
deeds  and  dispositions  of  the  successive  rulers  of  Eome. 
All  men,  wherever  their  country,  or  whatever  their 
position,  were  dependent,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  for 
their  happiness  or  misery  on  the  good  or  bad  temper  of 
an  individual  man.  If  he  was  cruel,  as  so  many  of  them 
were,  he  filled  the  patricians  of  Eome  with  fear,  and 
terrified  the  distant  inhabitants  of  Thrace  or  Gaul.  His 
benevolence,  on  the  other  hand,  was  felt  at  the  extremi- 
ties of  the  earth.  No  wonder  that  every  one  was  on 
the  watch  for  the  first  glimpse  of  a  new  emperor's 


POWER    OF   THE    EMPEROR.  ^^ 

chai-acter  and  disposition.  What  rejoicings  in  Italy  and 
Greece  and  Africa,  and  all  through  Europe,  when  a  trait 
of  goodness  was  reported !  and  what  a  sinking  of  the 
heart  when  the  old  story  was  renewed,  and  a  monster 
of  cruelty  succeeded  to  a  monster  of  deceit  I  For  the 
fearfuUest  thing  in  all  the  descriptions  of  Tiberius  is  the 
duplicity  of  his  behaviour.  He  withdrew  to  an  island  in 
tha  sunniest  part  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  covered  it 
with  gorgeous  buildings,  and  supplied  it  with  all  the  im- 
plem3iits  of  luxury  and  enjoyment.  From  this  magnifi- 
cent retirement  he  uttered  a  whisper,  or  made  a  motion 
with  his  hand,  which  displaced  an  Eastern  monarch 
from  his  throne,  or  doomed  a  senator  to  death.  Ho  was 
never  seen.  Ho  lived  in  the  dreadful  privacy  of  some 
fabled  deity,  and  was  only  felt  at  the  farthest  ends  of 
his  empire  by  the  unhappiness  he  occasioned;  by  his 
murders,  and  imprisonments,  and  every  species  of  suffer- 
ings men's  hearts  and  minds  were  bowed  down  beneath 
this  invisible  and  irresistible  oppressor.  Self-respect 
was  at  an  end,  and  liberty  was  not  even  wished  for.  The 
ompeior  had  swallowed  up  the  empire,  and  there  was  no 
authority  or  influence  beside.  This  is  the  main  feature 
of  the  first  or  Imperial  Century,  that,  wherever  wo 
look,  we  see  but  one, — one  gorged  and  bloated  brutalized 
man,  sitting  on  the  throne  of  earthly  power,  and  all  the 
rest  of  mankind  at  his  feet.  Humanity  at  its  flower  had 
culminated  into  a  Tiberius ;  and  when  at  last  ho  was 
slain,  and  the  world  began  to  breathe,  the  sorrow  was 
speedily  deeper  than  before,  for  it  was  found  that 
the  Imperial  tree  had  blossomed  again,  and  that 
.ts  fruit  was  a  Caligula. 

This  was  a  person  with  much  the  same  taste  for  blood 
as  his  predecessor,  but  he  was  more  open  in  the  gratifi- 
cation of  this  propensity.  He  did  not  wait  for  trial 
and  sentence, — those  dim  mockeries  of  justice  in  which 


-^  FIRST    CENTURY. 

Tiberius  sometimes  indulged.  He  had  n  peculiar  way 
of  nodding  with  his  head  or  pointing  with  his  finger, 
and  the  executioner  knew  the  sign.  The  man  he  nodded 
to  died.  For  the  more  distinguished  of  the  citizens  he 
kept  a  box, — not  of  snuff,  like  some  monarchs  of  the 
present  day,  but  of  some  strong  and  instantaneous 
poison.  Whoever  refused  a  pinch  died  as  a  traitor,  and 
whoever  took  one  died  of  the  fatal  drug.  Even  the 
degenerate  Eomans  could  not  endure  this  long,  and 
j^^  ^i  ChsBreas,  an  officer  of  his  guard,  put  him  to 
death,  after  a  sanguinary  reign  of  four  years. 
Still  the  hideous  catalogue  goes  on.  Claudius,  a 
nephew  of  Tiberius,  is  forced  upon  the  unwilling  senate 
by  the  spoilt  soldiers  of  the  capital,  the  Praetorian 
Guards.  Colder,  duller,  more  brutal  than  the  rest, 
Claudius  perhaps  increased  the  misery  of  his  country  by 
the  apathy  and  stupidity  of  his  mind.  The  other  tyrants 
had  some  limit  to  their  wickedness,  for  they  kept  all  the 
powers  of  the  State  in  their  own  hands,  but  this  man 
enlisted  a  countless  host  of  favourites  and  courtiers  in 
his  crusade  against  the  happiness  of  mankind.  Badly 
eminent  among  these  was  his  wife,  the  infamous  Messa- 
lina,  whose  name  has  become  a  symbol  of  all  that  is  de- 
testable in  the  female  sex.  Some  people,  indeed,  in 
reading  the  history  of  this  period,  shut  the  book  with  a 
shudder,  and  will  not  believe  it  true.  They  prefer  to 
think  that  authors  of  all  lands  and  positions  have  agreed 
to  paint  a  fancy  picture  of  depravity  and  horror,  than 
that  such  things  were.  But  the  facts  are  too  well 
proved  to  be  doubted.  We  see  a  dull,  unimpassioned, 
moody  despot ;  fond  of  blood,  but  too  indolent  to  shed  it 
himself,  unless  at  the  dictation  of  his  fiendish  partner 
ond  her  friends;  so  brutalized  that  nothing  amazed  or 
disturbed  him;  so  unobservant  that,  relying  on  his 
blindness,  she  went  through  the  ostentatious  ceremony 


CLAUDIUS.  21 

of  a  public  marriage  with  one  of  her  paramours  during 
the  lifetime,  almost  under  the  eyes,  of  her  husband ;  and 
yet  to  this  frightful  combination  of  ferocity  and  stupidity 
England  owes  its  subjection  to  the  Eoman  power,  and 
all  the  blessings  which  Eoman  civilization — ^bringing  as 
it  did  the  lessons  of  Christianity  in  its  train — ^was  calcu- 
lated to  bestow.  In  the  forty-fourth  year  of  this  cen- 
tury, and  the  third  year  of  the  reign  of  Claudius,  Aulus 
Plautius  landed  in  Britain  at  the  head  of  a  powerful 
army;  and  the  tide  of  Victory  and  Settlement  never 
subsided  till  the  whole  country,  as  far  north  as  the  Sol- 
way,  submitted  to  the  Eagles.  The  contrast  between 
the  central  power  at  Eome,  and  the  officials  employed 
at  a  distance,  continued  for  a  long  time  the  most  re- 
markable circumstance  in  the  history  of  the  empire 
Tiberius,  Caligula,  Claudius,  vied  with  each  other  in  ex- 
citing the  terror  and  destroying  the  happiness  of  the 
world ;  but  in  the  remote  extremities  of  their  command, 
their  generals  displayed  the  courage  and  virtue  of  an 
earlier  age.  They  improved  as  well  as  conquered. 
They  made  roads,  and  built  bridges,  and  cut  down 
woods.  They  established  military  stations,  which  soon 
became  centres  of  education  and  law.  They  deepened 
the  Thames,  and  commenced  those  enormous  embank- 
ments of  the  river,  to  which,  in  fact,  London  owes  its 
existence,  without  being  aware  of  the  labour  they  be- 
stowed upon  the  work.  If  by  some  misfortune  a  great 
fissure  took  place — as  has  occurred  on  a  small  scale 
once  before — in  these  artificial  dikes,  it  would  task  the 
greatest  skill  of  modern  engineers  to  repair  the  damage. 
They  superseded  the  blood-stained  ceremonies  of  the 
Druids  with  the  more  refined  worship  of  the  heathen 
deities,  making  Claudius  him&elf  a  Cutelury  god,  with 
priest  and  temple,  in  the  town  of  Colchester;  and  this, 
though  in  our  eyes  the  deification  of  one  of  the  worsi 


25J  FIRST   CENTURY. 

of  men,  was,  perhaps,  in  the  estimation  of  our  predeces* 
sora,  only  the  visible  embodiment  of  settled  government 
and  beneficent  power.  But  murder  and  treachery,  and 
unspeakable  iniquity,  went  their  way  as  usual  in  the 
city  of  the  Caesars.  Messalina  was  put  to  death,  and 
another  disgrace  to  womanhood,  in  the  person  of  Agrip- 
pina,  took  her  place  beside  the  phlegmatic  tyrant. 
Thirteen  years  had  passed,  when  the  boundary  of  human 
patience  was  attained,  and  Eome  was  startled  one 
morning  with  the  joyful  news  that  her  master  was  no 
more.  The  combined  cares  of  his  loving  spouse  and  a 
favourite  physician  had  produced  this  happy  result, — ^the 
one  presenting  him  with  a  dish  of  deadly  mushrooms, 
^,   and  the  other  painting  his  throat  for  a  hoarseness 

A.D.  54.  .  ,   «       , 

with  a  poisoned  feather. 
Is  there  no  hope  for  Eome  or  for  mankind  ?  Is  there 
to  be  a  perpetual  succession  of  monster  after  monster, 
with  no  cessation  in  the  dreadful  line?  It  would  bo 
pleasant  to  conceal  for  a  minute  or  two  the  name  of  the 
next  emperor,  that  we  might  point  to  the  glorious  pros- 
pect now  opening  on  the  world.  But  the  name  has 
become  so  descriptive  that  deception  is  impossible. 
When  the  word  Nero  is  said,  little  more  is  required. 
But  it  was  not  so  at  first;  a  brilliant  sunrise  never  had 
so  terrible  a  course,  or  so  dark  a  setting.  We  still  see 
in  the  earlier  statues  which  remain  of  him  the  fine  out- 
line of  his  face,  and  can  fancy  what  its  expression  must 
have  been  before  the  qualities  of  his  heart  had  stamped 
their  indelible  impression  on  his  features.  For  the  first 
five  years  of  his  reign  the  world  seemed  lost  as  much  in 
surprise  as  in  admiration.  Some  of  his  actions  were 
generous ;  none  of  them  were  cruel  or  revengeful.  He 
?ras  young,  and  seemed  anxious  to  fulfil  the  duties  of  his 
position.  But  power  and  flattery  had  their  usual  effect. 
All  that  was  good  in  him  was  turned  into  evil.     He 


NERO.  3fi« 

tortured  the  noblest  of  the  citizens ;  and  degraded  tho 
throne  to  such  a  degree  by  the  expositions  he  made  of 
himself;  sometimes  as  a  musician  on  the  stage,  some- 
times as  a  charioteer  in  the  arena,  that  if  there  had 
been  any  Eomans  left  they  would  have  despised  the 
tyrant  more  than  they  feared  him.  But  there  were  no 
Romans  left.  The  senators,  the  knights,  the  populace, 
vied  with  each  other  in  submission  to  his  power  and 
encouragement  of  his  vices.  Tho  rage  of  the  monster, 
once  excited,  knew  no  bounds.  He  burned  the  city  in 
the  mere  wantonness  of  crime,  and  fixed  the  blame  on 
the  unoffending  Christians.  These,  regardless  of  age  or 
condition  or  sex,  he  destroyed  by  every  means  in  his 
power.  He  threw  young  maidens  into  the  amphitheatre, 
where  the  hungry  tigers  leapt  out  upon  them ;  he  ex- 
posed the  aged  professors  of  the  gospel  to  fight  in 
single  combat  with  tho  trained  murderers  of  tho  circus, 
called  the  Gladiators;  and  once,  in  ferocious  mockery 
of  human  suffering,  he  enclosed  whole  Christian  families 
in  a  coating  of  pitch  and  other  inflammable  materials, 
and,  setting  fire  to  the  covering,  pursued  his  sport  all 
night  by  the  light  of  these  living  flambeaux.  Some  of 
his  actions  it  is  impossible  to  name.  It  will  be  suffi- 
cient to  say  that  at  the  end  of  thirteen  years  the  purple 
he  disgraced  was  again  reddened  with  blood.  Terrified 
at  the  opposition  that  at  last  rose  against  him — de- 
serted, of  course,  by  the  confederates  of  his  wickedness 
— shrinking  with  unmanly  cowardice  from  a  defence 
which  might  have  put  off  the  evil  day,  he  fled  and  hid 
himself  from  his  pursuers.  Agonized  with  fear,  howling 
with  repentant  horror,  he  was  indebt(!d  to  one  of  his 
attendants  for  the  blow  which  his  own  cowardly  hand 
could  not  administer,  and  he  died  the  basest,  lowest,  and 
most  pitiless  of  all  the  emperors.  And  all  those  hopes 
ho  had  disappointed,  and  all  those  iniquities  he  had  per- 


24 


FIRST   CENTURY. 


petrated,  at  the  age  of  thirty-two.  He  was  the  last  oi 
the  line  of  Caesar;  and  if  that  conqueror  had  foreseen 
that  in  so  few  years  after  his  death  the  Senate  of 
Eome  would  have  been  so  debased,  and  the  people  of 
Eome  so  brutalized,  he  would  have  pardened  to  Brut  as 
the  precautionary  blow  which  was  intended  to  prevent 
so  great  a  calamity. 

Galba  was  elected  to  fill  his  place,  and  was  mur- 

A.D.  oS.  ^  ' 

dered  in  a  few  months. 
The  degraded  praetorians  then  elevated  one  of  the 
companions  of  Nero's  guilty  excesses  to  the  throne  in 
the  person  of  Otho,  but  resistance  was  made  to  their 

selection.      The    forces  in   Germany  nominated 

Yitellius  to  the  supreme  authority;  and  Otho, 
either  a  voluptuary  tired  of  life,  or  a  craven  incapable 
of  exertion,  committed  suicide  to  save  the  miseries  of 
civil  war.  But  this  calamity  was  averted  by  a  nobler 
hand.  Vitellius  had  only  time  to  show  that,  in  addition 
to  the  usual  vices  of  the  throne,  he  was  addicted  to  the 
animal  enjoyments  of  eating  and  drinking  to  an  almost 
incredible  degree,  when  he  heard  a  voice  from  the  walls 
of  Jerusalem  which  hurled  him  from  the  seat  he  had  so 
lately  taken;  for  the  legions  engaged  in  that  most 
memorable  of  sieges  had  decided  on  giving  the  empire 
of  the  world  to  the  man  who  deserved  it  best,  and  had 
proclaimed  their  general.  Flavins  Yespasian,  Imperator 
and  Master  of  Eome. 
Now  we  will  pause,  for  we  have  come  to  the  year 
^     seventy  of  this  century,  and  a  fit  breathing-time 

to  look  round  us  and  see  what  condition  mankind 
has  fallen  into  within  a  hundred  years  of  the  end  of  the 
Eepublic.  We  leave  out  of  view  the  great  empires  of 
the  farther  East,  where  battles  were  won,  and  dynasties 
established  on  the  plains  of  Hindostan,  and  within  the 
Chinese  Wall.     The  extent  of  our  knowledge  of  OrientaJ 


SAVAGE   TRIBES.  26 

affah's  is  limited  to  the  circumference  of  the  JRoman  power. 
Following  that  vast  circle,  we  see  it  on  all  sides  sur- 
rounded by  tribes  and  nations  who  derive  their  sole  illu- 
mination from  its  light,  for  unless  the  Roman  conquests 
had  extended  to  the  confines  of  those  barbaric  states,  w<; 
should  have  known  nothing  of  their  existence.  Beyond 
that  ring  of  fire  it  is  almost  matter  of  conjecture  what 
must  have  been  going  on.  Yet  we  learn  from  the  tradi- 
tions of  many  peoples,  and  can  guess  with  some  accu- 
racy from  the  occurrences  of  a  later  period,  what  was 
the  condition  of  those  "  outsiders,"  and  what  were  their 
feelings  and  intentions  w^ith  regard  to  the  civilized  por- 
tions of  the  world.  Bend  your  eyes  in  any  direction  you 
please,  and  what  names,  what  thoughts,  suggest  them- 
selves to  our  minds!  We  see  swarms  of  w41d  adven- 
turers with  wives  and  cattle  traversing  with  no  definite 
object  the  uncultivated  districts  beyond  the  Danube; 
occasionally  pitching  their  tents,  or  even  forming  more 
permanent  establishments,  around  the  roots  of  Caucasus 
and  north  of  'the  Caspian  Sea,  where  grass  was  more 
plentiful,  and  hills  or  marshes  formed  an  easily  defended 
barrier  against  enemies  as  uncivilized  as  themselves. 
Coming  from  no  certain  region — that  is,  forgetting  in  a 
few  years  of  wandering  the  precise  point  from  which 
they  set  out,  pushed  forward  by  the  advancing  waves  of 
great  national  migrations  in  their  rear — moving  onward 
across  the  upper  fields  of  Europe,  but  keeping  themselves 
still  cautiously  from  actual  contact  with  the  Roman  limits, 
from  those  hordes  of  homeless,  lawless  savages  are  de- 
rived the  most  polished  and  greatest  nations  of  the  pre- 
sent day.  Forming  into  newer  combinations,  and  taking 
different  names,  their  identity  is  scarcely  to  bo  recognised 
when^  three  or  four  centui'ies  after  this,  they  come 
into  the  daylight  of  history;  but  nobody  can  doubt  that, 
during  these  preliminary  ages,  they  were  gathering  their 
2 


26  FIllST   CENTURY. 

power  together,  hereafter,  under  the  impulse  of  i'vaah 
additions,  to  be  hurled  like  a  dammed-up  river  upon  the 
prostrate  realm,  carrying  ruin  and  destruction  in  their 
course,  but  no  less  certainly  than  the  overflowing  Nile 
leaving  the  germs  of  future  fertility,  and  enriching  with 
newer  vegetation  the  fields  they  had  so  ruthlessly  sub- 
merged. And  year  by  year  the  mighty  mass  goes  on 
accumulating.  The  northern  plains  become  peopled  no 
one  knows  how.  The  vast  forests  eastward  of  the  Ehine 
receive  new  accessions  of  warriors,  who  'rapidly  assimi- 
late with  the  old.  United  in  one  common  object  of  re- 
taining the  wild  freedom  of  their  tribe,  and  the  posses- 
sion of  the  lands  they  have  seized,  they  have  opposed 
the  advance  of  the  Eoman  legions  into  the  uncultivated 
districts  they  call  their  own ;  they  have  even  succeeded 
in  destroying  the  military  forces  which  guarded  the 
Ehine,  and  have  with  difficulty  been  restrained  from 
crossing  the  great  river  by  a  strong  line  of  forts  and 
castles,  of  which  the  remains  astonish  the  traveller  of 
the  present  day,  as,  with  Murray's  Guide-Eook  in  his 
hand,  he  gazes  upon  their  ruins  between  ]^ingen  and 
Aix-la-Chapelle. 

Eepelled  by  these  barriers,  they  cluster  thicker  than 
ever  in  the  woods  and  valleys,  to  which  the  Eomans 
have  no  means  of  penetrating.  Southern  Gaul  submits, 
and  becomes  a  civilized  outpost  of  the  central  power; 
but  far  up  in  the  wild  regions  of  the  north,  and  even  to 
the  eastward  of  the  Gulfs  of  Bothnia  and  Finland,  the 
assemblage  goes  on.  Scandinavia  itself  becomes  over- 
crowded by  the  perpetual  arrival  of  thousands  of  these 
Hrmed  and  expatriated  families,  and  sends  her  teeming 
populations  to  the  east  and  south.  But  all  these  incidents, 
I  must  remind  you,  are  occurring  in  darkness.  We  only 
know  that  the  desert  is  becoming  peopled  with  crowded 
millions,  and  that  among  them  all  there  floats  a  confused 


VESPASIAN.  27 

notion  of  the  gTcatness  of  the  Roman  power,  the  wealth 
of  the  cities  and  plains  of  Italy ;  and  that,  clustering  in 
thicker  swarms  on  the  confines  of  civil  government,  the 
watchful  eyes  of  unnumbered  savage  warriors  are  fixed 
on  the  territories  lying  rich  and  beautiful  within  the 
protection  of  the  Eoman  name.  So  the  whole  Eoman 
boundary  gets  gradually  surrounded  by  barbaric  hosts. 
Their  trampings  may  be  heard  as  they  marshal  theii 
myriads  and  skirt  the  upper  boundaries  of  Thrace ;  bul 
as  yet  no  actual  conflict  has  occurred.  A  commotion 
may  become  observable  among  some  of  the  farthest  dis- 
tant of  the  half  intimidated  of  the  German  tribes ;  oi 
an  enterprising  Roman  settler  beyond  the  frontier,  oi 
travelling  merchant,  who  has  penetrated  to  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  Baltic,  may  bring  back  amazing  reports 
of  the  fresh  accumulations  of  unknown  hordes  of  strange 
and  threatenmg  aspect;  but  the  luxurious  public  in 
Rome  receive  them  merely  as  interesting  anecdotes  to 
arouse  their  leisure  or  gratify  their  curiosity :  they  have 
no  apprehension  of  what  may  be  the  result  of  those  mul- 
titudinous arrivals.  They  do  not  foresee  the  gradual 
drawing  closer  to  their  outward  defences — the  struggle 
to  get  within  their  guarded  lines — the  fight  that  is  surely 
coming  between  a  sated,  dull,  degraded  civilization  on 
the  one  side,  and  a  hungry,  bold,  ambitious  savagery  on 
the  other.  They  trust  every  thing  to  the  dignity  of  the 
Eternal  City,  and  the  watchfulness  of  the  Emperor :  for 
to  this,  his  one  idea  of  irresistible  power  equally  for 
good  or  evil,  the  heart  of  the  Roman  was  sure  to  turn. 
And  for  the  eleven  years  of  the  reigns  of  Vespasian  and 
Titus,  the  Roman  did  not  appeal  for  protection  against 
a  foreign  enemy  in  vain.  Rome  itself  was  compensated 
by  shows  and  buildings — with  a  triumph  and  an  arch — 
for  the  degradation  in  which  it  was  held.  But  prffitor 
and  proconsul  still  pursued  their  course  of  oppressing 


2»  FIRST   CENTURY. 

the  lands  committed  to  their  defence;  and  the  subject, 
stripped  of  his  goods,  and  hopeless  of  getting  his  Avi-onge 
redressed,  had  only  the  satisfaction  of  feeling  that  the 
Bword  he  trembled  at  was  in  the  hand  of  a  man  and  not 
of  an  incarnate  demon.  A  poor  consolation  this  when 
the  blow  was  equally  fatal.  Yespasian,  in  fact,  was 
fonder  of  money  than  of  blood,  and  the  empire  rejoiced 
in  having  exchanged  the  agony  of  being  murdered 

*  for  the  luxury  of  being  fleeced.  With  Titus,  whom 
the  fond  gratitude  of  his  subjects  named  the  Delight  of 
the  human  race,  a  new  age  of  happiness  was  about  to 
open  on  the  world ;  but  all  the  old  horrors  of  the  Caesars 
were  revived  and  magnified  when  he  was  succeeded, 
after  a  reign  of  two  years,  by  his  brother,  the 

■  savage  and  cowardly  Domitian.  "With  the  excep- 
tion of  the  brief  period  between  the  years  70  and  81,  the 
whole  century  was  spent  in  suffering  and  inflicting  pain. 
The  woi*st  excesses  of  iN'ero  and  Caligula  were  now 
imitated  and  surpassed.  The  bonds  of  society  became 
rapidly  loosened.  As  in  a  shipwreck,  the  law  of  self- 
preservation  was  the  only  rule.  No  man  could  rely 
npon  his  neighbour,  or  his  friend,  or  his  nearest  of  kin. 
There  were  spies  in  every  house,  and  an  executioner  at 
every  door.  An  unconsidered  word  maliciously  reported, 
or  an  accusation  entirely  false,  brought  death  to  the  rich 
and  great.  To  the  unhappy  class  of  men  who  in  other 
times  are  called  the  favourites  of  fortune,  because  they 
are  born  to  the  possession  of  great  ancestral  names  and 
hereditary  estatoy,  there  was  no  escape  from  the  jealous 
and  avaricious  hatred  of  the  Emperor.  If  a  patrician 
of  this  description  lived  in  the  splendour  befitting  his  rank 
—he  was  currying  favour  with  the  mob !  If  he  lived  re- 
tired— he  was  trying  to  gain  reputation  by  a  pretence  oi 
giving  up  the  world !  If  he  had  great  talents — he  was 
df^iigerous  to  the  state !    If  he  was  dull  and  stupid— oh! 


ITS   DREADFUL   CHARACTER, 


Sib 


ion*t  believe  it — ^he  was  only  an  imitative  Brutus,  con- 
cealing his  deep  designs  under  the  semblance  of  fatuity  \ 
If  a  man  of  distinguished  birth  was  rich,  it  was  not  a 
fitting  condition  for  a  subject — if  he  was  poor,  ho  wao 
likely  to  be  seduced  into  the  wildest  enterprises.  So 
the  prisons  were  filled  by  calumny  and  suspicion,  and 
emptied  by  the  executioner.  A  dreadful  century  this — 
the  worst  that  ever  entered  into  tale  or  history;  for  the 
memory  of  former  glories  and  comparative  freedom  was 
still  recent.  A  man  who  was  sixty  years  old,  in  the 
midst  of  the  terrors  of  Tiberius,  had  associated  in  his 
youth  with  the  survivors  of  the  Civil  War,  with  men 
who  had  embraced  Brutus  and  Cassiusj  he  had  seen  the 
mild  administration  of  Augustus,  and  perhaps  had  supped 
with  Yirgil  and  Horace  in  the  house  of  Majcenas.  And 
now  he  was  tortured  till  he  named  a  slave  or  frcedman 
of  the  Emperor  his  heir,  and  then  executed  to  expedite 
the  succession.  There  was  a  hideous  jocularity  in  some 
of  these  imperial  proceedings,  which,  however,  was  no 
laughing-matter  at  the  time.  When  a  senator  was  very 
wealthy,  it  was  no  unusual  thing  for  Tiberius  and  his 
successors  to  create  themselves  the  rich  man's  nearest 
relations  by  a  decree  of  the  Senate.  The  person  so 
honoured  by  this  graft  upon  his  family  tree  seldom  sur- 
vived the  operation  many  days.  The  emperor  took 
possession  of  the  property  as  heir-at-law  and  next  of 
kin ;  and  mourned  for  his  uncle  or  brother — as  the  case 
might  be — with  the  most  edifying  decorum. 

But  besides  giving  the  general  likeness  of  a  period,  it 
.8  necessary  to  individualize  it  still  further  by  introducing, 
in  the  background  of  the  picture,  some  incident  by  which 
.t  is  peculiarly  known,  as  we  find  Nelson  generally  repre- 
sented with  Trafalgar  going  on  at  the  horizon,  and  Wei- 
lington  sitting  thoughtful  on  horseback  in  the  foreground 
of  the  fire  of  Waterloo.    Now,  there  cannot  be  a  moro 


w 


FIRST   CENTURY. 


distiDguishing  mark  than  a  certain  great  military  achieve 
ment  which  happened  in  the  year  70  of  this  century,  and 
iu  brought  home  to  us,  not  only  as  a  great  historical  event 
in  itself,  but  as  the  commencement  of  a  new  era  in  human 
affairs,  and  the  completion  of  a  long  line  of  threats  and 
prophecies.  This  was  the  capture  and  destruction  of 
Jerusalem.  The  accounts  given  us  of  this  siege  tran- 
scend in  horror  all  other  records  of  human  sorrow.  It 
was  at  the  great  annual  feast  of  the  Passover,  when  Jews 
from  all  parts  of  the  world  flocked  to  the  capital  of  their 
nation  to  worship  in  the  Temple,  which  to  them  was  the 
earthly  dwelling-place  of  Jehovah.  The  time  was  come, 
and  they  did  not  know  it,  when  God  was  to  be  wor- 
shipped in  spirit  and  in  truth.  More  than  a  million 
strangers  were  resident  within  the  walls.  There  was  no 
room  in  house  or  hall  for  so  vast  a  multitude;  so  they 
bivouacked  in  the  streets,  and  lay  thick  as  leaves  in  the 
courts  of  the  holy  place.  Suddenly  the  Eoman  trumpets 
blew.  The  Jews  became  inspired  with  fanatical  hatred 
of  the  enemy,  and  insane  confidence  that  some  miracle 
would  be  wrought  for  their  deliverence.  They  delibe- 
rated, and  chose  for  their  leaders  the  wildest  and  most 
enthusiastic  of  the  crowd.  They  refused  the  offers  of 
mercy  and  reconciliation  made  to  them  by  Titus.  They 
sent  back  insulting  messages  to  the  Eoman  general,  and 
stood  expectant  on  the  walls  to  see  the  idolatrous  legions 
smitten  by  lightning  or  swallowed  up  by  an  earthquake. 
But  Titus  advanced  his  forces  and  hemmed  in  the  count- 
less multitude  of  men,  and  women,  and  children — few 
able  to  resist,  but  all  requiring  to  bo  fed.  Famine  and 
pestilence  came  on;  but  still  the  mad  fanatics  of  the 
Temple  determined  to  persevere.  They  occasionally 
opened  a  gate  and  rushed  out  with  the  cry  of  "  The 
Bword  of  the  Lord  and  of  Gideon !"  and  were  slaughtered 
by  the  unpitying  hatred  of  the  Eoman  soldiers.     Theit 


THE   SIEGE. 


81 


crucltj  to  thcii  prisoners,  when  they  succeeded  in  carry- 
ing off  a  few  of  their  enemies,  was  gi-eat;  but  the  pa- 
tience of  Titus  at  last  gave  way,  and  he  soon  bettered  the 
insti'Qction  they  gave  him  in  pitilessness  and  blood.  He 
Ui-ew  a  line  of  circumvallation  closer  round  the  city,  and 
intercepted  every  supply;  when  deserters  came  over,  he 
rnicified  them  all  round  the  trenches ;  when  the  worn- 
)ut  people  came  forth,  imploring  to  be  suffered  to  pass 
through  his  ranks,  he  drove  them  back,  that  they  might 
increase  the  scarcity  by  their  lives,  or  the  pestilence  by 
adding  to  the  heaps  of  unburied  dead.  Dissensions  were 
raging  all  this  time  among  the  defenders  themselves. 
They  fought  in  the  streets,  in  the  houses,  and  heaped 
the  floor  and  outcourts  of  the  Temple  with  thousands  of 
the  slain.  There  was  no  help  either  from  heaven  or 
earth;  eleven  hundred  thousand  people  had  died  of 
plague  and  the  sword;  and  the  rest  were  doomed  to 
perish  by  more  lingering  torments.  Nearest  relations — 
sisters,  brothers,  fathers,  wives — all  forgot  the  ties  of 
natural  affection  under  this  great  necessity,  and  fought 
for  a  handful  of  meal,  or  the  possession  of  some  reptile's 
body  if  they  were  lucky  enough  to  trace  it  to  its  hiding- 
place;  and  at  last — the  crown  of  all  horrors — ^the 
daughter  of  Eleazer  killed  her  own  child  and  converted 
it  into  food.  The  measure  of  man's  wrong  and  Heaven's 
vengeance  was  now  full.  The  daily  sacrifice  ceased  to  be 
offered ;  voices  were  audible  to  the  popular  ear  uttering 
in  the  Holy  of  Holies,  "Let  us  go  hence."  The  Eomans 
rushed  on — climbed  over  the  neglected  walls — forced 
their  way  into  the  upper  Temple,  and  the  gore  flowed 
in  streams  so  rapid  and  so  deep  that  it  seemed  like  a 
purple  river!  Large  conduits  had  been  made  for  the 
rapid  conveyance  away  of  the  blood  of  bulls  and  goats 
offered  in  sacrifice;  they  all  became  choked  now  with 
the  blood  of  the  slaughtered  people.     At  last  the  city 


•2  FIRST   CENTURY. 

was  taken ;  the  inhabitants  were  cither  dead  or  dying 
Many  were  crushed  as  they  lay  expiring  in  the  great 
tramplings  of  the  triumphant  Romans ;  many  were  re- 
covered by  food  and  shelter,  and  sold  into  slavery.  Tho 
Temple  and  walls  were  levelled  with  tho  ground,  and 
not  one  stone  was  left  upon  another.  Tho  plough  passed 
over  where  palace  and  tower  had  been,  and  tho  Jewish 
dispensation  was  brought  to  a  close. 

Historj^  in  ancient  days  was  as  exclusive  as  tho  court 
newsman  in  ours,  and  never  published  the  movements 
of  anybody  below  a  senator  or  a  consul.  All  the  Browns 
and  Smiths  were  left  out  of  consideration ;  and  yet  to 
us  who  live  in  tho  days  when  those  families — with  the 
Joneses  and  Robinsons — form  the  great  majority  both 
in  number  and  influence,  it  would  be  very  interesting  to 
have  any  certain  intelligence  of  their  predecessors  during 
the  first  furies  of  the  Empire.  "We  have  but  faint  de- 
scriptions even  of  the  aristocracy,  but  what  we  hear  of 
them  shows,  more  clearly  than  any  thing  else,  the  fright- 
ful effect  on  morals  and  manliness  of  so  uncontrolled  a 
power  as  was  vested  in  the  Cffisars,  and  teaches  us  that 
the  worst  of  despotisms  is  that  which  is  established  by 
the  unholy  union  of  the  dregs  of  the  population  and 
the  ruling  power,  against  the  peace  and  happiness  and 
security  of  the  middle  class.  You  see  how  this  combi- 
nation of  tyrant  and  mob  succeeded  in  crushing  all  tho 
layers  of  society  which  lay  between  therr.,  till  there  were 
left  only  two  agencies  in  all  the  world—  the  Emperor  on 
his  throne,  and  the  millions  fed  by  his  bounty.  Tho 
hereditary  nobility — the  safest  bulwark  of  a  people  and 
least  dangerous  support  of  a  throne — were  cxtii*j:)atcd 
before  the  end  of  the  century,  and  impartiality  makes 
US  confess  that  they  fell  by  their  ovm  flxult.  As  if  the 
restraints  of  shame  had  been  thrown  off  witli  tho  last 
bope  of  liberty,  the  whole  population  broke  forth  into 


STATB   OF   ROME.  88 

the  most  incredible  licentiousness.  If  the  luxury  of 
Lucullus  had  offended  the  common  sense  of  propriety 
in  the  later  days  of  the  republic,  there  were  numbers 
now  who  looked  back  upon  his  feasts  as  paltry  enter- 
tainments, and  on  the  wealth  of  Croesus  as  poverty. 
The  last  of  the  Pompeys,  in  the  time  of  Caligula,  had 
estates  so  vast,  that  navigable  rivers  larger  than  the 
Tbunes  performed  the  whole  of  their  course  from  their 
fountain-head  to  the  sea  without  leaving  his  domain. 
There  were  spendthrifls  in  the  time  of  Tiberius  who 
lavished  thousands  of  pounds  upon  a  supper.  The  pil- 
lage of  the  world  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  a  few 
favoured  families,  and  their  example  had  introduced  a 
prodigality  and  ostentation  unheard  of  before.  No  one 
who  regarded  appearances  travelled  anywhere  without 
a  troop  of  Numidian  horsemen,  and  outriders  to  clear 
the  way.  He  was  followed  by  a  train  of  mules  and 
sumpter-horses  loaded  with  his  vases  of  crystal — his 
richly-carved  cups  and  dishes  of  silver  and  gold.  But 
this  profusion  had  its  natural  result  in  debt  and  degi*a- 
dation.  The  patricians  who  had  been  rivals  of  the 
imperial  splendour  became  dependants-  on  the  imperial 
gifts;  and  the  grandson  of  the  conqueror  of  a  kingdom, 
or  the  proconsul  of  the  half  of  Asia,  sold  his  ancestral 
palace,  lived  for  a  while  on  the  contemptuous  bounty  of 
his  master,  and  sank  in  the  next  generation  into  the 
nameless  mass.  Others,  more  skilful,  preserved  oi 
improved  their  fortunes  while  they  rioted  in  expense. 
By  tbt-cats  or  promises,  they  prevailed  on  the  less 
powerful  to  constitute  them  their  heirs;  they  traded 
on  the  strength,  or  talents,  or  the  beauty  of  their 
slaves,  and  lent  money  at  such  usurious  interest  that 
the  borrower  tried  in  vain  to  escape  the  shackles  of 
the  law,   and   ended   by  becoming  the   bondsman   of 


M  FIRST   CENTURY. 

the  kind-hearted  gentleman  who   had   induced  him  to 
accept  the  loan. 

If  these  were  the  habits  of  the  rich,  how  were  the 
poor  treated?  The  free  and  penniless  citizens  of  the 
capital  were  degraded  and  gratified  at  the  same  time 
The  wealthy  vied  with  each  other  in  buying  the  favour 
of  the  mob  by  shows  and  other  entertainments,  by  gifts 
of  money  and  donations  of  food.  But  when  these  arts 
failed,  and  popularity  could  no  longer  be  obtained  by 
merely  defraying  the  expense  of  a  combat  of  gladiators, 
the  descendants  of  the  old  patricians — of  the  men  who 
had  bought  the  land  on  which  the  Gauls  were  en- 
camped outside  the  gates  of  Eome — went  down  into  the 
arena  themselves  and  fought  for  the  public  entertain- 
ment. Laws  indeed  were  passed  even  in  the  reign  of 
Tiberius,  and  renewed  at  intervals  after  that  time, 
against  this  shameful  degradation,  and  the  stage  was 
interdicted  to  all  who  were  not  previously  declared  in- 
famous by  sentence  of  a  court.  But  all  was  in  vain. 
Ladies  of  the  highest  rank,  and  the  loftiest-born  of  the 
nobility,  actually  petitioned  for  a  decree  of  defamation, 
that  they  might  give  themselves  up  undisturbed  to  their 
favourite  amusement.  This  perhaps  added  a  zest  to 
their  enjoyment,  and  rapturous  applauses  must  have 
hailed  the  entrance  of  the  beautiful  grandchild  of 
Anthony  or  Agrippa,  in  the  character  and  drapery  of  a 
warlike  amazon — the  louder  the  applause  and  greater 
the  admiration.  Yet  in  order  to  gratify  them  with  such 
a  sight,  she  had  descended  to  the  level  of  the  convict, 
and  received  the  brand  of  qualifying  disgrace  from  a 
legal  tribunal.  But  the  faint  barrier  of  this  useless  pro- 
hibition was  thrown  down  by  the  policy  and  example 
of  Domitian.  The  emperor  himself  appeared  in  the 
arena,  and  all  restraint  was  at  an  end.  Rather,  there 
WSL8  a  fury  of  emulation  to  coi)y  so  great  a  model,  and 


TREATMENT   OF   SLAVES.  85 

•*Eome's  proud  dames,  whose  garments  swept  the 
ground,"  iorgot  more  than  ever  their  rank  and  sex,  and 
were  proud,  like  their  lovers  and  brothers,  not  merely 
to  mount  the  stage  in  the  lascivious  costume  of  nymph 
or  dryad,  but  to  descend  into  the  blood-stained  lists  of 
the  Coliseum  and  murder  each  other  with  sword  and 
spear.  There  is  something  strangely  horrible  in  this 
transaction,  when  we  read  that  it  occurred  for  the  first 
time  in  celebration  of  the  games  of  Flora — the  goddess 
of  flowers  and  gardens,  who,  in  old  times,  was  wor- 
shipped under  the  blossomed  apple-trees  in  the  little 
orchards  surrounding  each  cottage  within  the  walls, 
and  was  propitiated  with  children's  games  and  chaplcts 
hung  upon  the  boughs.  But  now  the  loveliest  of  the 
noble  daughters  of  the  city  lay  dead  upon  the  trampled 
sand.  "What  was  the  effect  upon  the  populace  of  thcso 
extraordinary  shows  ? 

Always  stern  and  cruel,  the  Roman  was  now  never 
satisfied  unless  with  the  spectacle  of  death.  Sometimes 
in  the  midst  of  a  play  or  pantomime  the  fierce  lust  of 
blood  would  seize  him,  and  ho  would  cry  out  for  a 
combat  of  gladiators  or  nobles,  who  instantly  obeyed  j 
and  after  the  fight  was  over,  and  the  corpses  removed, 
the  play  would  go  on  as  if  nothing  had  occurred.  The 
banners  of  the  empire  still  continued  to  bear  the  initial 
letters  of  the  great  words — the  Senate  and  people  of 
Rome.  We  have  now,  in  this  rapid  survey,  seen  what 
both  those  great  names  have  come  to — the  Senate  crawl- 
ing at  the  feet  of  the  emperor,  and  the  people  living  on 
charity  and  shows.  The  slaves  fared  worst  of  all,  for 
they  were  despised  by  rich  and  poor.  The  sated  volup- 
tuary whoso  property  they  were  sometimes  found  an 
excitement  to  his  jaded  spirits  by  having  them  tortured 
-H  his  sight.  They  were  allowed  to  die  of  starvation 
when  they  grew  old,  unless  they  were  turned  to  use,  as 


^^  FIRST   CENTURY. 

was  done  by  one  of  their  possessors,  Vidms  Pollio,  who 
cast  the  fattest  of  his  domestics  into  his  fish-pond  to  feed 
his  lampreys.  The  only  other  classes  were  the  actors 
and  musicians,  the  dwarfs  and  the  philosophers.  They 
contributed  by  their  wit,  or  their  uncouth  shape,  or  their 
oracular  sentences,  to  the  amusement  of  their  employers, 
and  were  safe.  They  were  licensed  characters,  and  could 
say  what  they  chose,  protected  by  the  long-drawn  coun- 
tenance of  the  stoic,  or  the  comic  grimaces  of  the  buffoon. 
So  early  as  the  time  of  Nero,  the  people  he  tyrannized 
and  flattered  were  not  less  ruthless  than  himself.  In 
his  cruelty — in  his  vanity — in  his  frivolity,  and  his 
entire  devotion  to  the  gratification  of  his  passions — ^he 
was  a  true  representative  of  the  men  over  whom  he 
ruled.  Emperor  and  subject  had  even  then  become 
fitted  for  each  other,  and  flowers,  we  are  credibly  told 
by  the  historians,  were  hung  for  many  years  upon  his 
tomb. 

Humanity  itself  seemed  to  be  sunk  beyond  the  possi- 
bility of  restoration ;  but  we  see  now  how  necessary  it 
was  that  our  nature  should  reach  its  lowest  point  of 
depression  to  give  full  force  to  the  great  reaction  which 
Christianity  introduced.  Men  were  slavishly  bending 
at  the  footstool  of  a  despot,  trembling  for  life,  bowed 
down  by  fear  and  misery,  when  suddenly  it  was  re- 
ported that  a  great  teacher  had  appeared  for  a  whilo 
upon  earth,  and  declared  that  all  men  were  equal  in  the 
sight  of  God,  for  that  God  was  the  Father  of  all.  The 
slave  heard  this  in  the  intervals  of  his  torture — the  cap- 
tive in  his  dungeon — the  widow  and  the  orphan.  To 
the  poor  the  gospel,  or  good  news,  was  preached.  It 
was  this  which  made  the  trembling  courtiers  of  the 
worst  of  the  emperors  slip  out  noiselessly  from  the 
palace,  and  hear  from  Paul  of  Tarsus  or  his  disciples 
the  new  prospect  that  was   opening  on  mankind.     It 


TREATMENT    OF    SLAVES.  37 

Spread  quickly  among  those  oppressed  and  hopelesa 
multitudes.  The  subjection  of  the  Koman  empire — its 
misery  and  degradation — were  only  a  means  to  an  end 
The  harsher  the  laws  of  the  tyrant,  the  more  gracious 
Beemed  the  words  of  Christ.  The  two  masters  were 
plainly  set  before  them,  which  to  choose.  And  who 
could  hesitato?  One  said,  "Tremble I  suffer!  die!" 
The  other  said,  "Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that  are  weary 
and  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  roetl" 


SECOND  CENTURY. 


iSmperors, 

A.O. 

Trajan — [continued.)    Third  Persecution  of  the Chrifa 
tians. 
117         Adrian.     Fourth  Persecution  of  the  Christians. 
138.        Antoninus  Pius. 
161.        Marcus  Aurelius. 
180.        commodus. 

193.        Pertinax — DiDius,  and  Niger — Defeated  by 
193.        Septimius  Severus. 

Plint  the  Younger,  Plutarch,  Suetonius,  Juvenal,  Arrian, 
^LiAN,  Ptolemy,  (Geographer,)  Appian,  Epictetus,  Pausanias, 
Galen,  (Physician,)  ATHENiEus,  Tertullian,  Justin  Marttii, 
Iatian,  iRENiEus,  Athenagoras,  Theophilus  of  Antiocu,  ClB- 
iiBNT  or  Alexandria,  Marcion,  (Heretic.) 


THE  SECOISD  CEl^TUEY. 

THE   GOOD   EMPERORS. 

J  s  looking  at  the  second  century,  we  see  a  total  differ- 
ence in  the  expression,  though  the  main  features  con- 
tinue unchanged.  There  is  still  the  central  power  at 
Rome,  the  same  dependence  everywhere  else ;  but  the 
central  power  is  beneficent  and  wise.  As  if  tired  of  the 
hereditary  rule  of  succession  which  had  ended  in  such  a 
monster  as  Domitian,  the  world  took  refuge  in  a  new 
system  of  appointing  its  chiefs,  and  perhaps  thought  it 
a  recommendation  of  each  successive  emperor  that  ho 
had  no  relationship  to  the  last.  We  shall  accordingly 
find  that,  after  this  period,  the  hereditary  principle  is 
excluded.  It  was  remarked  that,  of  the  twelve  first 
Cajsars,  only  two  had  died  a  natural  death — for  even  in 
the  case  of  Augustus  the  arts  of  the  poisoner  were  sus- 
pected— and  those  two  were  Yespasian  and  Titus,  men 
who  had  no  claim  to  such  an  elevation  in  right  of  lofty 
birth.  Birth,  indeed,  had  ceased  to  be  a  recommendation. 
All  the  great  names  of  the  Eepublic  had  been  carefully 
rooted  out.  Few  people  were  inclined  to  boast  of  their 
ancestry  when  the  proof  of  their  pedigree  acted  as  a  sen- 
tence of  death  j  for  there  was  no  surer  passport  to  destruc- 
tion in  the  times  of  the  early  emperors  than  a  connection 
with  the  Julian  line,  or  descent  from  a  historic  family. 
No  one,  therefore,  took  the  trouble  to  inquire  into  the 
4D  96  S^^^^logy  ^^  Ncrva,  the  old  and  generous  man 
who  succeeded  the  monster  Domitian.  His  nomi- 
ttation  to  the  empire  elevated  him  at  once  out  of  the 


*2  SECOND   CENTURY. 

sphere  of  these  inquiries,  for  already  the  same  supersti- 
tious  reverence  surrounded  the  name  of  AugustuH 
which  spreads  its  inviolable  sanctity  on  the  throne  of 
Eastern  monarchs.  "Whoever  sits  upon  that,  by  what- 
ever title,  or  however  acquired,  is  the  legitimate  and 
unquestioned  king.  No  rival,  therefore,  started  up  tc 
contest  the  position  either  of  Nerva  himself,  or  of  the 
stranger  he  nominated  to  succeed  him.  Men  bent  in 
humble  acquiescence  when  they  knew,  in  the  third  year 
of  this  century,  that  their  master  was  named 
Trajan, — that  he  was  a  Spaniard  by  birth,  and 
the  best  general  of  Eome.  For  eighty  years  after  that 
date  the  empire  had  rest.  Life  and  property  were  com- 
paratively secure,  and  society  flowed  on  peaceably  in 
deep  and  well-ascertained  channels.  A  man  might  have 
been  born  at  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Domitian,  and  die 
in  extreme  old  age  under  the  sway  of  the  last  of  the 
Antonines,  and  never  have  known  of  insecurity  or  op- 
pression — 

**  Malice  domestic,  foreign  levy,  nothing 
Could  touch  him  farther !" 

No  wonder  those  agreeable  years  were  considered  by 
the  fond  gratitude  of  the  time,  and  the  unavailing  re- 
grets of  succeeding  generations,  the  golden  age  of  man. 
Nerva,  Trajan,  Adrian,  Antoninus  Pius,  Marcus  Aurelius 
Antoninus — these  are  still  great  names,  and  are  every- 
where recognised  as  the  most  wonderful  succession  of 
sovereigns  the  world  has  ever  seen.  They  are  still  called 
the  "  Good  Emperors,"  the  "  Wise  Eulers." 

It  is  easy,  indeed,  to  be  good  in  comparison  with  JS'ero, 
and  wise  in  comparison  with  Claudius;  but  the  effect 
of  the  example  of  those  infamous  tyrants  made  it 
doubly  difficult  to  be  either  good  or  wise.  The  world 
bad  become  so  accustomed  to  oppression,  that  it  seemed 
ftt  first  sur],rised  at  the  change  that  had  taken  place. 


UAPPINESS   OF   THE   WORLD. 


48 


The  emperors  had  to  cieato  a  knowledge  of  justice  be- 
fore their  just  acts  could  be  appreciated.  The  same 
opposition  other  men  have  experienced  in  introducing 
bad  and  cruel  measures  was  roused  by  their  introduc- 
tion of  wise  and  salutary  laws.  What !  no  more  sum- 
mary executions,  nor  forfeitures  of  fortunes,  nor  banish- 
ments to  the  Danube  ?  All  men  equal  before  the  dread 
tribunal  of  the  imperial  judge  ?  The  world  was  surely 
coming  to  an  end,  if  the  emperor  did  not  now  and  then 
poison  a  senator,  or  stab  his  brother,  or  throw  half  a 
dozen  courtiers  to  the  beasts !  It  is  likely  enough  that 
some  of  the  younger  Eomans  at  first  lamented  those 
days  of  unlimited  license  and  perpetual  excitement; 
but  in  the  course  of  time  those  wilder  spirits  must  have 
died  out,  and  the  world  gladly  acquiesced  in  an  exist- 
ence of  dull  security  and  uninteresting  peace.  By  the 
end  of  the  reign  of  Trajan  the  records  of  the  miseries 
of  the  last  century  must  have  been  studied  as  curiosities 
— as  historical  students  now  look  back  on  the  extrava- 
gances and  horrors  of  the  French  Eevolution.  Fortu- 
nately, men  could  not  look  forward  to  the  times,  more  piti- 
able still,  when  their  descendants  should  fall  into  greater 
sorrows  than  had  been  inflicted  on  mankind  by  the 
worst  of  the  Cajsars,  and  they  enjoyed  their  present 
immunity  from  suffering  without  any  misgivings  about 
the  future.  But  a  government  which  does  every  thing 
for  a  people  renders  it  unable  to  do  any  thing  for  itself 
The  subject  stood  quietly  by  while  the  emperor  filled  all 
the  offices  of  the  State — guarded  him,  fed  him,  clothed 
him,  treated  him  like  a  child,  and  reduced  him  at  last 
to  childlike  dependence.  An  unjust  proconsul,  instead 
of  being  supported  and  encouraged  in  his  exactions,  was 
dismissed  from  his  employment  and  forced  to  refund 
his  ill-got  gains, — ^the  population,  relieved  from  their 
oppressor,  saw  in  his  punishment  the  hand  of  an  avong* 


1*  SECOND   CENTURY. 

ing  Providence.  The  wakeful  eye  of  the  governor  in 
Rome  saw  the  hostile  preparations  of  a  tribe  of  bar- 
barians  beyond  the  Danube;  and  the  legions,  crossing 
the  river,  dispersed  and  subdued  them  before  they  had 
time  to  devastate  the  Roman  fields.  The  peaceful 
colonist  saw,  in  the  suddenness  of  his  deliverance,  the 
foresight  and  benevolence  of  a  divinity.  !N"o  words  were 
powerful  enough  to  convey  the  sentiments  of  admiration 
awakened,  by  such  vigour  and  goodness,  in  the  breast 
of  a  luxurious  and  effeminate  people;  and  accordingly, 
if  we  look  a  little  closely  into  the  personal  attributes  of 
the  five  good  emperors,  wo  shall  see  that  some  part  of 
their  glory  is  due  to  the  exaggerations  of  love  and  grati- 
tude. 

Nerva  reigned  but  sixteen  months,  and  had  no  time 
to  do  more  than  display  his  kindness  of  disposition,  and 
to  name  his  successor.  This  was  Trajan,  a  man  who 
was  not  even  a  Roman  by  birth,  but  who  was  thought 
by  his  patron  to  have  retained,  in  the  distant  province 
of  Spain  where  he  was  born,  the  virtues  which  had  dis- 
appeared in  the  centre  and  capital  of  the  empire.  The 
deficiency  of  Nervals  character  had  been  its  softness 
and  want  of  force.  The  stem  vigilance  of  Trajan  made 
ample  amends.  He  was  the  best-known  soldier  of  his 
time,  and  revived  once  more  the  terror  of  the  Roman 
arms.  He  conquered  wherever  he  appeared;  but  his 
warlike  impetuosity  led  him  too  far.  He  trod  in  the 
footsteps  of  Alexander  the  Great,  and  advanced  farther 
eastward  than  any  of  the  Eoman  armies  had  previously 
done.  But  his  victories  were  fruitless :  he  attached  no 
new  country  permanently  to  the  empire,  and  derives  all 
his  glory  now  from  the  excellence  of  his  internal  admi- 
nistration. He  began  his  government  by  declaring  him- 
self as  subordinate  to  the  laws  as  the  meanest  of  the 
people.    His  wife,  Pompcia  Plotina,  was  worthy  of  such 


TRAJAN.  « 

ft  husband,  and  Baid,  on  mounting  the  steps  of  the 
palace,  that  she  should  descend  them  unaltered  from 
what  she  was.  The  emperor  visited  his  friends  on 
terms  of  equality,  and  had  the  greatness  of  mind,  gene- 
rally deficient  in  absolute  princes,  to  bestow  his  confi- 
dence on  those  who  deserved  it.  Somebody,  a  member 
perhaps  of  the  old  police  who  had  made  such  fortunes 
in  the  time  of  Domitian  by  alarming  the  tyrant  with 
stories  of  plots  and  assassinations,  told  Trajan  one  day 
to  beware  of  his  minister,  who  intended  to  murder  him 
on  the  first  opportunity.  "Come  again,  and  tell  mo 
all  particulars  to-morrow,"  said  the  emperor.  In  the 
mean  time  he  went  unbidden  and  supped  with  the 
accused.  He  was  shaved  by  his  barber — was  attended 
for  a  mock  illness  by  his  surgeon — bathed  in  his  bath — 
and  ate  his  meat  and  drank  his  wine.  On  the  following 
day  the  informer  came.  "  Ah !"  said  Trajan,  interrupt- 
ing him  in  his  accusation  of  Surenus,  "if  Surenus  had 
wished  to  kill  me,  he  would  have  done  it  last  night." 
The  emperor  died  when  returning  from  a  distant  expe- 
dition in  the  East,  and  Pompeia  declared  that  he 
*  had  long  designated  Adrian  as  his  successor.  This 
evidence  was  believed,  and  Adrian,  also  a  Spaniard  by 
birth,  and  eminent  as  a  military  commander,  began  his 
reign.  Trajan  had  been  a  general — a  conqueror,  and 
had  extended  for  a  time  the  boundaries  of  the  Roman 
power.  But  Adrian  believed  the  empire  was  largo 
enough  already.  He  withdrew  the  eagles  from  the  half- 
subdued  provinces,  and  contented  himself  with  the 
natural  limits  which  it  was  easy  to  defend.  But  within 
those  limits  his  activity  was  unexampled.  He  journeyed 
from  end  to  end  of  his  immense  domain,  and  for  seven- 
twjn  years  never  rested  in  one  spot.  News  did  not 
travel  fast  in  those,  days — ^but  the  emperor  did.  Long 
before  the  inhabitants  of  Syria  and  Egypt  heard  that 


46  SECOND   CENTURY. 

he  had  left  Eome  on  an  expedition  to  Britain,  he  had 
rushed  through  Gaul,  crossed  the  Channel,  inquired  into 
thjD  proceedings  of  the  government  officers  at  York; 
given  orders  for  a  wall  to  keep  out  the  Caledonians,  (an 
attempt  which  has  proved  utterly  vain  at  all  periods  of 
English  history,  down  to  the  present  day,)  and  suddenly 
made  his  appearance  among  the  bewildered  dwellers  in 
Ephcsus  or  Carthage,  to  call  tax-gatherers  to  order  and 
to  inspect  the  discipline  of  his  troops.  The  master's 
eye  was  every ,vhere,  for  nobody  knew  on  what  point  it 
was  fixed.  And  such  a  master  no  kingdom  has  been 
able  to  boast  of  since.  His  talents  were  universal.  He 
read  every  thing  and  forgot  nothing.  He  was  a  musi- 
cian, a  poet,  a  philosopher.  He  studied  medicine  and 
mineralogy,  and  plead  causes  like  Cicero,  and  sang 
like  a  singer  at  the  opera.  Perhaps  it  is  difficult  to 
judge  impartially  of  the  qualities  of  a  Eoman  emperor. 
One  day  he  found  fault  on  a  point  of  grammar  with  a 
learned  man  of  the  name  of  Favorinus.  Favorinus 
could  have  defended  himself  and  justified  his  language, 
but  continued  silent.  His  friends  said  to  him,  "  Why 
didn't  you  answer  the  emperor's  objections?"  "Do  you 
think,"  said  the  sensible  grammarian,  "I  am  going  to 
enter  into  disputes  with  a  man  who  commands  thirty 
legions  ?"  But  the  greatness  of  Adrian's  character  is, 
that  he  did  command  those  thirty  legions.  He  was 
severe  and  just;  and  Eoman  discij^line  was  never  more 
exact.  The  result  of  this  was  shown  on  the  grand  scale 
only  once  during  this  reign,  and  that  was  in  the  case  of 
the  revolted  Jews.  We  have  seen  the  state  to  which 
their  Temple  at  Jerusalem  was  reduced  by  Titus.  Fifty 
years  had  now  passed,  and  the  passionate  love  of  the 
people  for  their  native  land  had  congregated  them  once 
more  within  their  renovated  walls,  and  raised  up  another 
temple  on  the  site  of  the  old.     They  still  expected  the 


ADRIAN.  '  47 

Messiah,  for  the  Messiah  to  them  represented  vengeance 
upon  the  Eomans  and  triumph  over  the  world.  An  im- 
postor of  the  name  of  Barcho-chebas  led  three  hundred 
thousand  of  them  into  the  field.  They  were  inad  with 
national  hatred,  aud  inspired  with  fanatical  hope.  It 
took  three  years  of  desperate  effort  to  quell  this  sedi- 
tion 'j  and  then  Adrian  had  his  revenge.  The  country 
was  laid  waste.  Fifty  towns  and  a  thousand  villages 
were  sacked  and  burned.  The  population,  once  more 
nearly  exhausted  by  war  and  famine,  furnished  slaves, 
which  were  sold  all  over  the  East.  Jerusalem  itself  felt 
the  conqueror's  hatred  most.  Its  name  was  blotted  out 
— it  was  called  iElia  Capitolina;  and,  with  ferocious 
mockery,  over  the  gate  of  the  new  capital  of  Judea  was 
affixed  the  statue  of  the  unclean  beast,  the  abomination 
oi  the  Israelite.  But  nothing  could  keep  the  Jews  from 
visiting  the  land  of  so  many  promises  and  so  much  glory. 
"Whenever  they  had  it  in  their  power,  they  crept  back 
from  all  quarters,  if  it  were  only  to  weep  and  die  amid 
the  ruins  of  their  former  power. 

Trajan  and  Adrian  had  now  made  the  world  accus- 
tomed to  justice  in  its  rulers;  and  as  far  as  regards  their 
public  conduct,  this  character  is  not  to  be  denied.  Yet 
m  their  private  relations  they  were  not  so  faultless. 
Trajan  the  great  and  good  was  a  drunkard.  To  such  a 
pitch  did  he  carry  this  vice,  that  he  gave  orders  that 
after  a  certain  hour  of  the  day  none  of  his  commands 
were  to  be  obeyed.  Adrian  was  worse :  he  was  regard- 
less of  life;  he  put  men  to  death  for  very  small  offences 
An  architect  was  asked  how  he  liked  a  certain  series  of 
statues  designed  by  the  emperor  and  ranged  in  a  sitting 
attitude  round  a  temple  which  he  had  built.  The  archi- 
tect was  a  humourist,  not  a  courtier.  "If  the  god- 
desses," he  said,  "  take  it  into  their  heads  to  rise,  they 
will  never  be  able  to  get  out  at  the   door."    A  poor 


48 


SECOND   CENTURY. 


criticism,  and  not  a  good  piece  of  wit,  but  not  bad 
enough  to  justify  his  being  beheaded;  yet  the  answer 
cost  the  poor  man  liis  life.  As  Adrian  grew  older,  he 
grew  more  reckless  of  the  pain  ho  gave.  He  had  a 
brother-in-law  ninety  years  of  age,  and  there  was  a 
grandson  of  the  old  man  aged  eighteen.  He  had  them 
both  executed  on  proof  or  susjDicion  of  a  conspiracy. 
The  popular  feeling  was  revolted  by  the  sight  of  the 
mingled  blood  of  two  suifercrs  so  nearly  related,  at  the 
opposite  extremities  of  life.  The  old  man,  just  before 
he  died,  protested  his  innocence,  and  uttered  a  revenge- 
ful prayer  that  Adrian  might  wish  to  die  and  find  death 
impossible!  This  imprecation  was  fulfilled.  The  em- 
peror was  tortured  with  disease,  and  longed  for  deliver- 
ance in  vain.  He  called  round  him  his  physicians,  and 
priests,  and  sorcerers,  but  they  could  give  him  no  relief. 
He  begged  his  slaves  to  kill  him,  and  stabbed  himself 
with  a  dagger;  but  in  spite  of  all  he  could  not  die. 
Lingering  on,  and  with  no  cessation  of  his  pain,  he 
must  have  had  sad  thoughts  of  the  past,  and  no  pleasant 
anticipations  of  the  future,  if,  as  we  learn  from  the  verses 
attributed  to  him,  he  believed  in  a  future  state.  His  lines 
still  remain,  but  are  indebted  to  Pope,  who  paraphrased 
them,  for  their  Christian  spirit  and  lofty  aspiration: — 

"Vital  spark  of  heavenly  flame ! 
Quit,  oh,  q'lit  this  mortal  frame ! 
Trembling,  hoping,  lingering,  flying. 
Oh,  the  pain,  the  bliss  of  dying ! 
Cease,  fond  nature,  cease  thy  strife, 
And  let  me  languish  into  life  ! 

"  Hark !  they  •whisper !  angels  say, 
Sister  spirit,  come  away  ! 
What  is  this  absorbs  me  quite. 
Steals  my  senses,  shuts  my  sight. 
Drowns  my  spirits,  draws  my  breath  ? 
Tell  me,  my  soul,  can  this  be  death  7 


ANTONINUS.  « 

"The  world  recedes;  it  disappears ! 
Heaven  opens  on  my  eyes  !  my  ea- 1 

"With  sounds  seraphic  ring: 
Lend,  lend  your  wings !     I  mount  I     I  fly  ! 
0  Grave !  where  is  thy  victory  ? 
0  Death !  where  is  thy  sting  V 

His  wish  was  at  last  acLieved.  Ho  died  aged  sixty- 
Iwo,  having  reigned  twenty-one  years.  In  travelling 
»nd  building  his  whole  time  was  spent.  Temples,  theatres, 
bridges — wherever  he  went,  these  evidences  of  his  wisdom 
or  magnificence  remained.  He  persecuted  the  Christians, 
but  found  persecution  a  useless  proceeding  against  a  sect 
who  gloried  in  martyrdom,  and  whoso  martyrdoms  were 
only  followed  by  new  conversions.  He  tried  what  an 
opposite  course  of  conduct  would  do,  and  is  said  to  have 
intended  to  erect  a  temple  to  Jesus  Christ.  "  Take  care 
what  you  do,"  said  one  of  his  counsellors:  "if  you 
permit  an  altar  to  the  God  of  the  Christians,  those  of 
the  other  gods  will  be  deserted." 

But  now  came  to  supreme  authority  the  good  and 
^„„  wise  Antoninus  Pius,  who  was  as  blameless  in 

A.D.  i38. 

his  private  conduct  as  in  his  public  acts.  His 
fame  extended  farther  than  the  Eoman  arms  had  ever 
reached.  Distant  kings,  in  lands  of  which  the  names 
«vere  scarcely  known  in  the  Forum,  took  him  as  arbiter 
of  their  differences.  The  decision  of  the  great  man  in 
Rome  gave  peace  on  the  banks  of  the  Indus.  The  bar- 
barians themselves  on  the  outskirts  of  his  dominions 
were  restrained  by  respect  for  a  character  so  pure  and 
power  so  wisely  used.  An  occasional  revolt  in  Britain 
was  quelled  by  his  lieutenants — an  occasional  conspiracy 
ftgainst  his  authority  was  caused  by  the  discontent 
'vhich  turbulent  spirits  feel  when  restrained  by  law. 
The  conspiracies  were  repressed,  and  on  one  occasion 
Iwo  of  the  ringleaders  were  put  to  death.  The  Senate 
vas  for  making  further  inquiry  into  the  plot.  "  Let  us 
3 


^  SECOND   CENTURY. 

stop  here,"  said  the  emperor.  "I  do  not  "wish  to  find 
out  how  many  people  I  have  displeased."  Some  stories 
are  told  of  him,  which  show  how  little  he  affected  the 
state  of  a  despotic  ruler.  A  pedantic  philosopher  at 
Smyrna,  of  the  name  of  Polemo,  returned  from  a 
journey  at  a  late  hour,  and  found  the  proconsul  of 
Kome  lodged  in  his  house.  This  proconsul  was  Anto- 
nine,  who  at  that  time  had  been  appointed  to  the  office 
Dy  Adrian.  Instead  of  being  honoured  by  such  a  guest, 
the  philosopher  stormed  and  raged,  and  made  so  much 
noise,  that  in  the  middle  of  the  night  the  sleepless  pro- 
consul left  the  house  and  found  quarters  elsewhere. 
When  years  passed  on,  and  Antonine  was  on  the  throne, 
Polemo  had  the  audacity  to  present  himself  as  an  old 
acquaintance.  "Ha!  I  remember  him,"  said  the  em- 
peror: "let  him  have  a  room  in  the  palace,  but  don't  let 
him  leave  it  night  or  day."  The  imprisonment  was  not 
long,  for  we  find  the  same  Polemo  hero  of  another  anec- 
dote during  this  visit  to  Rome.  Ho  hissed  a  performer  in 
the  theatre,  and  stamped  and  screeched,  and  made  such 
a  disturbance  that  the  unfortunate  actor  had  to  leave 
the  stage.  He  complained  of  Polemo  to  the  emj^eror. 
"Polemo!"  exclaimed  Antonine;  "he  forced  you  off  the 
stage  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  but  he  drove  me  from  his 
house  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and  yet  I  never  ap- 
pealed." It  would  be  pleasant  if  we  could  learn  that 
Polemo  did  not  get  off  so  easily.  But  the  twenty-two 
years  of  this  reign  of  mildness  and  probity  were  brought 
to  a  close,  and  Marcus  Aurelius  succeeded  in  161. 
Marcus  Aurelius  did  no  dishonour  to  the  discernment 
,^,   of  his  friend  and  adoptive  father  Antoninus  Pius. 

i^D.  161,  ^ 

Studying  philosophy  and  practising  self-command, 
ne  emulated  and  surpassed  the  virtues  of  the  self-denying 
leaders  of  his  sect,  and  only  broke  through  the  rule  he 
imposed  on  himself  of  clemency  and  mildness,  when  he 


MARCUS   AURELIUS.  51 

found  philosophy  in  danger  of  being  counted  a  vain  de 
ceit,  and  the  active  duties  of  human  brotherhood  pre* 
ferrod  to  the  theoretic  rhapsodies  on  the  same  subject 
with   which  his  works  were   filled.     Times  began   to 
change.     Men  were  dissatisfied  with  the  unsubstantial 
dream  of  Platonist  and  Stoic.     There  were  symptoms 
of  an  approaching  alteration  in  human  afiairs,  which 
perplexed  the  thoughtful  and  gave  promise  of  impunity 
to  the  bad.    Perhaps  a  man  who,  clothed  in  the  impe- 
rial purple,  bestowed  so  much  study  on  the  intellectual 
niceties  of  the  Sophists,  and  endeavoured  to  keep  his 
mind  in  a  fit  state  for  abstract  speculation  by  scourging 
and  starving  his  body,  was  not  so  fitted  for  the  approach- 
ing crisis  as  a  rougher  and  less  contemplative  nature 
would  have  been.    Britain  was  in  commotion,  there  were 
tumults  on  the  Ehine,  and  in  Armenia  the  Parthians 
cut  the  Boman  legions  to  pieces.    And  scarcely  were 
those   troubles   settled    and   punished,   when   a   worse 
calamity  befell  the  Roman  empire.     Its  inviolability  be- 
came a  boast  of  the  past.     The  fearful  passions  for  con- 
quest and  rapine  of  the  border-barbarians  were  roused. 
Barbaric  cohorts  encamped  on  the  fields  of  Italy,  and 
the  hosts  of  wild  men  from  the  forests  of  the  Nortli  pil- 
laged the  heaped-up  treasures  of  the  garden  of  the  world. 
The  emperor  flew  to  the  scene  of  danger,  but  the  fatal 
word  had  been  said.     Italy  was  accessible  from  the  Alps 
and  from  the  sea;  and,  though  a  bloody  defeat  at  Aquileia 
flung  back  the  invaders,  disordered  and  dispirited,  over 
the  mountains  they  had  descended  with  such  hopes,  the 
struggle   was   but   begun.     The   barbarians  felt  their 
power,  and  the  old  institutions  of  Rome  were  insufli- 
cient  to  resist  future  attacks.     But  to  the  aid  of  the  old 
Roman  institutions  a  new  institution  came,  an  institu- 
tion which  was  destined  to  repel  the  barbarians  by  over- 
cjoming  barDarism  itself,  and  save  the  dignity  of  Kom« 


^2  SECOND   CENTURT, 

by  giving  it  the  protection  of  the  Cross.  But  at  present 
— that  is,  during  the  reign  of  the  philosophic  Marcus 
Aurelius— a  persecution  raged  against  the  Christiana 
which  seemed  to  render  hopeless  all  chance  of  their 
•nccees.  The  mild  laws  of  Trajan  and  Adrian,  and  the 
favourable  decrees  of  Antoninus  Pius,  were  set  aside  by 
the  contemptuous  enmity  of  this  explorer  of  the  myste- 
rious heights  of  virtue,  which  occasionally  carried  him 
out  of  sight  of  the  iower  but  more  important  duties  of 
life.  An  unsocial  tribe  the  Christians  were,  who  rigor- 
ously shut  their  eyes  to  the  beauties  of  abstract  perfec- 
tion, and  preferred  the  plain  orders  of  the  gospel  to  the 
most  ambitious  periods  of  the  emperor.  But  the  perse- 
cution of  a  sect  so  small  and  so  obscure  as  the  Chris- 
tian was  at  that  time,  is  scarcely  perceptible  as  a  diminu- 
tion of  the  sum  of  human  happiness  secured  to  the 
world  by  the  gentleness  and  equity  which  regulated  all 
his  actions.  Here  is  an  example  of  the  way  in  which  he 
treated  rebels  against  his  authority.  An  insurrection 
broke  out  in  Syi'ia  and  the  East,  headed  by  a  pretended 
descendant  of  the  patriot  Cassius,  who  had  conspired 
against  Julius  Caesar.  The  emperor  hurried  to  meet 
him — some  say  to  resign  the  empire  into  his  hands,  to 
prevent  the  effusion  of  blood ;  but  the  usurper  died  in 
an  obscure  commotion,  and  nothing  was  left  but  to  take 
vengeance  on  his  adherents.  This  is  the  letter  the  con- 
queror wrote  to  the  Senate : — "  I  beseech  you,  conscript 
Fathers !  not  to  punish  the  guilty  with  too  much  rigour. 
Let  no  Senator  be  put  to  death.  Let  the  banished  re- 
turn to  their  country.  I  wish  I  could  give  back  their 
lives  to  those  who  have  died  in  this  quarrel.  Eevenge 
is  unworthy  of  an  emperor.  You  will  pardon,  therefore, 
the  children  of  Cassius,  his  son-in-law,  and  his  wife. 
Pardon,  did  I  say  ?  Ah !  what  crime  have  they  com- 
mitted?   Let  them  live  in  safety,  let  them  retain  nU 


DEATil   OF   MARCUS   AURELIUS.  68 

that  Cassius  possessed.  Let  them  live  in  whatevei 
place  they  choose,  to  be  a  moDument  of  your  clemency 
and  mine." 

In  such  hands  as  these  the  fortune  of  mankind  was 
safe.  A  pity  that  the  father's  feelings  got  the  better  of 
his  judgment  in  the  choice  of  his  successor.  It  is  the 
one  blot  on  his  otherwise  perfect  disinterestedness.  In 
dying,  with  such  a  monster  as  Commodus  ready  to  leap 
into  his  seat,  he  must  have  felt  how  inexpressibly  valu- 
able his  life  would  be  to  the  Eoman  people.  Ho  perhaps 
saw  the  danger  to  which  ho  exposed  the  world ;  for  he 
committed  his  son  to  the  care  of  his  wisest  counsellors, 
and  begged  him  to  continue  the  same  course  of  govern- 
ment he  had  pursued.  Perhaps  ho  was  tired  of  life,  per- 
haps he  sought  refuge  in  his  self-denying  philosophy  from 
the  prospect  he  saw  before  him  of  a  state  of  perpetual 
struggle  and  eventual  overthrow.  When  the  Tribune 
came  for  the  last  time  to  ask  the  watchword  of  the  day, 
"Go  to  the  rising  sun,"  he  said;  "for  me,  I  am  just 
going  to  set." 

And  here  the  history  of  the  Second  Century  should 
close.  It  is  painful  to  go  back  again  to  the  hideous 
scenes  of  anarchy  and  crime  from  which  wo  have  been 
delivered  so  long.  What  must  the  sage  counsellors,  tho 
chosen  companions  and  equals  in  age  of  tho  Antonines, 
have  thought  when  all  at  once  the  face  of  affairs,  which 
they  must  have  believed  eternal,  was  changed  ? — when 
the  noblest  and  wisest  in  the  land  were  again  thrown 
heedlessly  into  the  arena  without  trial? — when  spies 
watched  every  meal,  and  the  ferocious  murderer  on  the 
throne  seemed  to  gloat  over  the  struggles  of  hia  victims  ? 
Yet,  if  they  had  reflected  on  the  inevitable  course  of 
events,  they  must  have  seen  that  a  government  de- 
pending on  the  character  of  one  man  could  never  be 
relied  on.   Where,  indeed,  could  any  element  of  security 


M  SECOND   CENTURY. 

bo  found  ?  The  very  ground- work  of  society  was  over- 
thrown. There  was  no  independent  body  erect  amid 
the  general  prostration  at  the  footstool  of  the  emperor. 
Local  self-government  had  ceased  except  in  name.  All 
the  towns  which  hitherto  had  been  subordinate  to  Eome^ 
but  endowed  at  the  same  time  with  privileges  which 
were  worth  defending,  had  been  absorbed  into  the  great 
whirlpool  of  imperial  centralization,  and  were  admitted 
to  the  rights  of  Eoman  citizenship, — now  of  little  value, 
since  it  embraced  every  quarter  of  the  empire.  Jupiter 
and  Juno,  and  the  herd  of  effete  gods  and  goddesses, 
if  they  had  ever  held  any  practical  influence  over  the 
minds  of  men,  had  long  sunk  into  contempt,  except  in 
BO  far  as  their  rich  establishments  were  defended  by 
persons  interested  in  their  maintenance,  and  the  proces- 
sions and  gaudy  display  of  a  foul  and  meretricious  wor- 
ship were  pleasing  to  the  depraved  taste  of  the  mob. 
But  the  religious  principle,  as  a  motive  of  action,  or  as 
a  point  of  combination,  was  at  an  end.  Augurs  were 
still  appointed,  and  laughed  at  the  uselessness  of  their 
office;  oracles  were  still  uttered,  and  ridiculed  as  the 
offspring  of  ignorance  and  imposture ;  conflicting  deities 
fought  for  pre-eminence,  or  compromised  their  differences 
by  an  amalgamation  of  their  altars,  and  perhaj)S  a  divi- 
sion of  their  estates.  It  was  against  this  state  of  society 
the  early  Fathers  directed  their  warnings  and  denuncia- 
tions. The  world  did  certainly  lie  in  darkness,  and  it 
was  indispensable  to  warn  the  followers  of  Christ  not 
to  be  conformed  to  the  fashion  of  that  fleeting  time. 
Some,  to  escape  the  contagion  of  this  miserable  condi- 
tion, when  men  were  without  hope,  and  without  even 
the  wretched  consolation  which  a  belief  in  a  false  god 
would  have  given  them,  fled  to  the  wilds  and  caves. 
Hermits  escaped  equally  the  perils  of  sin  and  the  hos- 
tility of  the  heathen.     Believers  were  exhorted  to  fle«» 


FORCES   OF  THE   EMPIRE.  65 

ft  cm  cv)iilamination,  and  somo  took  the  words  in  their 
literal  meaning.  But  not  all.  Many  remained,  and 
fought  the  good  fight  in  the  front  of  the  battle,  as 
became  the  soldiers  of  the  cross.  In  the  midst  of  tho 
anarchy  and  degradation  which  characterized  the  last 
years  of  the  century,  a  society  was  surely  and  steadily 
advancing  towards  its  full  development,  bound  by  rules 
in  the  midst  of  the  helplessness  of  external  law,  and 
combined  by  strong  faith,  in  a  world  of  utter  unbelief — an 
empire  within  an  empire — soon  to  bo  the  only  specimen 
left  either  of  government  or  mutual  obligation,  and 
finally  to  absorb  into  its  fresh  and  still-spreading  orgj^n- 
ization  the  withered  and  impotent  authority  which  had 
at  first  seen  in  it  its  enemy  and  destroyer,  and  found 
it  at  last  its  refuge  and  support.  Yet  at  this  very  time 
the  empire  had  never  appeared  so  strong.  By  a  stroke 
of  policy,  which  the  event  proved  to  be  injudicious, 
Marcus  Aurelius,  in  the  hope  of  diminishing  the  number 
of  his  enemies,  had  converted  many  thousands  of  the 
barbarians  into  his  subjects.  They  had  settlements 
assigned  them  within  the  charmed  ring.  What  they 
had  not  been  able  to  obtain  by  the  sword  was  now 
assured  to  them  by  treaty.  But  the  unity  of  the  Eoman 
empire  by  this  means  was  destroyed.  Men  were  ad- 
mitted within  the  citadel  who  had  no  reverence  im- 
planted in  them  from  their  earliest  years  for  the  majesty 
of  the  Eoman  name.  They  saw  the  riches  contained  in 
the  stronghold,  and  were  only  anxious  to  open  the  gates 
to  their  countrymen  who  were  still  outside  the  walls. 

But  before  we  enter  on  the  downward  course,  and 
smce  we  are  now  arrived  at  the  period  of  the  greatest 
apparent  force  and  extent  of  the  Eoman  empire,  let  us 
floe  what  it  consisted  of,  and  what  was  the  real  amount 
r>f  its  power. 

Viewed  in  comparison  with  some  of  the  mon;archief 


56 


SECOND   CENTURY. 


of  the  present  day,  neither  its  extent  of  territory,  noi 
amount  of  population,  nor  number  of  soldiers,  is  very 
Bui'prising.  The  Queen  of  England  reigns  over  more 
subjects,  and  commands  far  mightier  fleets  and  armies, 
than  any  of  the  Eoman  emperors.  The  empire  of 
Russia  is  more  extensive,  and  yet  the  historians  of  a  few 
generations  ago  are  lost  in  admiration  of  the  power  of 
Home.  The  whole  military  force  of  the  empire  amounted 
to  four  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men.  The  total 
number  of  vessels  did  not  exceed  a  thousand.  But  see 
what  were  the  advantages  Rome  possessed  in  the  com- 
pactness of  its  territory  and  the  unity  of  its  government. 
The  great  Mediterranean  Sea,  ]>eopled  and  cultivated  on 
both  its  shores,  was  but  a  peaceful  lake,  on  which  the 
Roman  galley  had  no  enemy  to  fear,  and  the  merchant- 
ship  dreaded  nothing  but  the  winds  and  waves.  There 
were  no  fortresses  to  be  garrisoned  on  what  are  now  the 
boundaries  of  jealous  or  hostile  kingdoms.  If  the  great 
circuit  of  the  Roman  State  could  be  protected  from  bar- 
barian inroads,  the  internal  defence  of  all  that  vast  en- 
closure could  be  left  to  the  civil  power.  If  the  Black 
Sea  and  the  Sea  of  Azoff  could  be  kept  clear  of  piratical 
adventurers,  the  broad  highway  of  the  Mediterranean 
was  safe.  A  squadron  near  Gibraltar,  a  squadron  at  the 
Dardanelles,  and  the  tribes  which  might  possibly  venture 
in  from  the  ocean — the  tribes  which,  slipping  down  from 
the  Don  or  the  Dnieper,  might  thread  their  way  through 
the  Hellespont  and  emerge  into  the  Egean — were  caught 
at  their  first  appearance ;  and  when  the  wisdom  of  the 
Romans  had  guarded  the  mouths  of  the  Danube  from 
the  descent,  in  canoe  or  coracle,  of  the  wild  settlers  on 
its  upper  banks,  the  peace  and  commerce  of  the  whole 
empire  were  secured.  With  modern  Europe  the  case  is 
very  different.  There  are  boundaries  to  be  guarded 
vhich  occupy  more  soldiers  than  the  territories  are 


MODERN   FORCES.  6? 

iTorth.  Lines  are  arbitrarily  fixed  across  the  centre  of 
a  plain,  or  along  the  summit  of  a  mountain,  which  it  is 
a  case  of  war  to  pass.  Belgium  defends  her  flats  with  a 
hundred  thousand  men,  and  the  marshes  of  Holland  are 
secured  by  sixty  thousand  Dutch.  The  State  of  Dessau 
in  Germany,  threatens  its  neighbours  with  fifteen  hun 
dred  soldiers,  while  Reuss  guards  its  dignity  and  indo. 
pendence  with  three  hundred  infantry  and  fifty  horse. 
But  the  Great  Powers,  as  they  are  called,  take  away 
from  the  peaceable  and  remunerative  employments  of 
trade  or  agriculture  an  amount  of  labour  which  would 
be  an  incalculable  increase  to  the  riches  and  happiness 
of  the  world.  The  aggregate  soldiery  of  Europe  is  up- 
wards of  five  millions  of  men, — -just  eleven  times  the 
largest  calculation  of  the  Roman  legions.  The  ships  of 
Europe — to  the  smaller  of  which  the  greatest  galleys  of 
the  ancient  world  would  scarcely  serve  as  tenders — 
amount  to  2113.  The  number  of  guns  they  carry,  againsi 
which  there  19  nothing  we  can  take  as  a  measure  of 
value  in  ancient  warfare,  but  which  are  now  the  greatest 
and  surest  criterions  of  military  power,  amounts  to 
45,367.  But  this  does  not  give  so  clear  a  view  of  tho 
alteration  in  relative  power  as  is  yielded  by  an  inspec- 
tion of  some  of  the  separate  items.  Gaul,  included 
within  tho  Ehine,  was  kept  in  order  by  six  or  seven 
legions.  The  French  empire  has  on  foot  an  army  of  six 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men,  and  a  fleet  of  four  hun- 
dred sail.  Britain,  which  was  garrisoned  by  thirty 
thousand  men,  had,  in  1855,  an  army  at  home  and  abroad 
of  six  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  men,  and  a  fleet  of 
five  hundred  and  ninety-one  ships  of  war,  with  an  arma- 
ment of  seventeen  thousand  guns.  The  disjointed  States 
which  now  constitute  the  Empire  of  Austria,  and  which 
occupied  eight  legions  in  their  defence,  are  now  in  pos- 
session of  an  army  of  six  hundred  thousand  men ;  and 


d8 


SECOND   CENTURY. 


Prussia,  whose  army  exceeds  half  a  million  of  soldiers, 

was  unheard  of  except  in  the  discussions  of  geographers.* 

With  the  death  of  the  excellent  Marcus  Aurelius  the 

golden  age  came  to  a  close.     Commodus  sat  on 

the  throne,  and  renewed  the  wildest  atrocities 

of  the  previous  century.     Nero  was  not  more  cinio!-— 

*  Tho  following  is  a  carefully  compiled  table  of  the  forces  of  Europe  in 
the  year  1854-55.  Since  that  time  the  Russian  fleet  has  been  destroyed,  but 
the  diminution  has  been  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the  increased  navies 
of  the  other  powers. 

Military  Forces  op  Europe  in  1855. 

Men.  Ships.  Onus. 

Austria 650,000              102                   762 

Bavaria 239,886 

Belgium 100,000 

Denmark 75,169              120                   880 

France 650,000              407              11,77* 

Germany 452,473 

Great  Britain 265,000*             591              17,291 

ercecc 10,226               25                   143 

Ionian  Isles 3,000                  4 

Modena  and  Parma 6,302' 

Netherlands 58,647                84                2,000 

Papal  States 11,274 

Portugal 33,000                44                   404 

Prussia 525,000                50                   250 

Russia 699,000              207                9,000 

Sardinia 48,088                40                   900 

Sicilies 106,264               29                   444 

Spain 75,000              410                1,530 

Sweden 167,000 

Switzerland. 108,000 

Tuscany 16,930 

Turkey 310,970 

4,611,229  2113  45,36^ 

1  Indian  army  250,000,  and  militia  145,000,  not  included ;  making  a  total  of  6CO,000 
«  Taking  an  average  of  ten  men  to  each  gun,  the  sailors  will  be  453^670 ;  which  giroi 
«  total  of  fighting-men,  5,064,899  ! !  I 


THE   EMPIRE   BOUGHT.  5^ 

Domitian  was  not  so  reckless  of  human  life.  He  fought 
in  the  arena  against  weakly-armed  adversaries,  and 
Blew  them  without  remorse.  He  polluted  the  whole  cit^ 
with.bloodj  and  made  money  by  selling  permissions  tc 
murder.  Thirteen  years  exhausted  the  patience  of  the 
world,  and  a  justifiable  assassination  put  an  end  to  his  life. 
There  was  an  old  man  of  the  name  of  Pertinax,  originally 
a  nickname  derived  from  his  obstinate  or  pertinacious 
disposition,  who  now  made  his  appearance  on  the  throne 
and  perished  in  three  months.  It  chanced  that  a  certain 
rich  man  of  the  name  of  Didius  was  giving  a  supper  the 
night  of  the  murder  to  some  friends.  The  dishes  were 
rich,  and  the  wine  delicious.  Inspired  by  the  good  cheer, 
the  guests  said,  "  Why  don't  you  buy  the  empire  ?  The 
soldiers  have  proclaimed  that  they  will  give  it  to  the 
highest  bidder."  Didius  knew  the  amount  of  his  treasure, 
and  was  ambitious :  he  got  up  from  table  and  hurried  to 
the  Praetorian  camp.  On  the  way  ho  met  the  mutilated 
body  of  the  murdered  Pertinax,  dragged  through  the 
streets  with  savage  exultation.  Nothing  daunted,  ho 
arrived  at  the  soldiers'  tents.  Another  had  been  before 
him — Sulpician,  the  father-in-law  and  friend  of  the  late 
emperor.  A  bribe  had  been  offered  to  each  soldier,  so 
large  that  they  were  about  to  conclude  the  bargain ;  but 
Didius  bade  many  sesterces  more.  The  greedy  soldiery 
looked  from  one  to  the  other,  and  shouted  with  delight, 
%8  each  new  advance  was  made.  At  last  Sulpician  was 
silent,  and  Didius  had  purchased  the  Eoman  world 
at  the  price  of  upwards  of  £200  to  each  soldier 
/)f  the  Praetorian  guard.  He  entered  the  palace  in  state, 
and  concluded  the  supper,  which  had  been  interrupted 
at  his  own  house,  on  the  viands  prepared  for  Pertinax. 
But  the  excitement  of  the  auction-room  was  too  pleasant 
to  be  left  to  the  troops  in  Rome.  Offers  were  made  to 
the  legions  in  all  the  provinces,  and  Didius  was  threatened 


60 


SECOND   CENTURY. 


on  every  side.  Even  the  distant  garrisons  of  Britain 
named  a  candidate  for  the  throne ;  and  Claudius  Albinu? 
assumed  the  imperial  j)ui*ple;  and  crossed  over  into  Gaul. 
More  irritated  still,  the  army  in  Syria  elected  its  general, 
Pescennius  Niger,  emperor,  and  ho  prepared  to  dispute 
the  prize;  but  quietly,  steadily,  with  stern  face  and  un- 
relenting heart,  advancing  from  province  to  province, 
keeping  his  forces  in  strict  subjection,  and  laying  claim 
lo  supreme  authority  by  the  mere  strength  of  his  in- 
domitable will,  came  forward  Septimius  Severus,  and 
both  the  pretenders  saw  that  their  fate  was  sealed. 
Illyria  and  Gaul  recognised  his  title  at  once.  Albinus 
was  haj)py  to  accept- from  him  the  subordinate  title  of 
Caesar,  and  to  rule  as  his  lieutenant.  Didius,  whose  bar- 
gain turned  out  rather  ill,  besought  him  to  be  content 
with  half  the  empire.  Severus  slew  the  messengers 
who  brought  this  proposition,  and  advanced  in  grim 
silence.  The  Senate  assembled,  and,  by  way  of  a 
pleasant  reception  for  the  Illyrian  chief,  requested 
Didius  to  prepare  for  death.  The  executioners  found 
him  clinging  to  life  with  unmanly  tenacity,  and  killed 
him  when  he  had  reigned  but  seventy  days.  One  other 
competitor  remained,  the  general  of  the  Syrian  army — 
the  closest  friend  of  Severus,  but  now  separated  from 
him  by  the  great  temptation  of  an  empire  in  dispute. 
This  was  Niger,  from  whom  an  obstinate  resistance  was 
expected,  as  he  was  equally  famous  for  his  courage  and 
his  skill.  But  fortune  was  on  the  side  of  Severus.  Niger 
was  conquered  after  a  short  struggle,  and  his  head  pre- 
sented to  the  victor.  "Was  Albinus  still  to  live,  and  ap- 
proach so  near  the  throne  as  to  have  the  rank  of  Caesar  ? 
i\.ssassins  were  employed  to  murder  him,  but  he  escaped 
their  assault.  The  treachery  of  Severus  brought  many 
supporters  to  his  rival.  The  Roman  armies  were  ranged 
in  hostile  camps.     Severus  again  was  fortunate,  and  Al- 


SEPTIMIUS   SEVERUS.  61 

binus,  dashing  towards  him  to  engage  in  combat,  wa? 
slain  before  his  eyes.  Ho  watched  his  dying  agonies 
for  some  time,  and  then  forced  his  horse  to  trample  on 
the  coi*pse.  A  man  of  harsh,  implacable  nature — not  so 
much  cruel  as  impenetrable  to  human  feelings,  and  per- 
haps forming  a  just  estimate  of  the  favourable  effect 
upon  his  fortunes  of  a  disposition  so  calm,  and  yet  so  ^ 
relentless.  The  Prsetorians  found  they  had  appointed 
their  master,  and  put  the  sword  into  his  hand.  He  used 
it  without  remorse.  He  terrified  the  boldest  with  his 
imperturbable  stillness;  he  summoned  the  seditious 
soldiery  to  wait  on  him  at  his  camp.  They  were  to 
come  without  arms,  without  their  military  dress,  almost 
like  suppliants,  certainly  not  like  the  ferocious  liber- 
tines they  had  been  when  they  had  sold  the  empire  at 
the  highest  price.  "  Whoever  of  you  wishes  to  live," 
said  Severus,  frowning  coldly,  "  will  depart  from  this, 
and  never  come  within  thirty  leagues  of  Rome.  Take 
their  horses,"  he  added  to  the  other  troops  who  had 
surrounded  the  PrsDtorians,  "  take  their  accoutrements, 
and  chase  them  out  of  my  sight."  Did  the  Senate 
receive  a  milder  treatment  ?  On  sending  them  the  head 
of  Albinus,  he  had  written  to  the  Conscript  Fathers 
alarming  them  with  the  most  dreadful  threats.  And 
now  the  time  of  execution  had  come.  He  made  them 
an  oration  in  praise  of  the  proscriptions  of  Marius  and 
Sylla,  and  forced  them  to  deify  the  tyrant  Commodus, 
who  had  hated  them  all  his  life.  He  then  gave  a  signal 
to  his  train,  and  the  streets  ran  with  blood.  All  who 
had  borne  high  oflSice,  all  who  were  of  distinguished 
birth,  all  who  were  famous  for  their  wealth  or  popular 
with  the  citizens,  were  put  to  death.  He  crossed  over 
to  England  and  repressed  a  sedition  there.  His  son 
Caracalla  accompanied  him,  and  commenced  his  career 
>f  warlike  ardour  and  frightful  ferocity,  which  can  only 


82  SECOND   CENTURY. 

be  explained  on  the  ground  of  his  being  mad.  He  tried 
even  to  murder  his  father,  in  open  day,  in  the  sight  of 
the  soldiers.  Ho  was  stealing  upon  the  old  man,  when 
a  cry  from  the  legion  made  him  turn  round.  His  in- 
flexible eye  fell  upon  Caracalla — the  sword  dropped  from 
his  unnlial  hand — and  dreadful  anticipations  of  vengeance 
.filled  the  assembly.  The  son  was  pardoned,  but  his  ac- 
complices, whether  truly  or  falsely  accused,  perished  by 
cruel  deaths.  At  last  the  emperor  felt  his  end  approach. 
Ho  summoned  his  sons  Caracalla  and  Geta  into  his  pre- 
sence, recommended  them  to  live  in  unity,  and  ended  by 
the  advice  which  has  become  the  standing  maxim  of 
military  despots,  "Be  generous  to  the  soldiers,  and 
trample  on  all  beside." 

With  this  hideous  incarnation  of  unpitying  firmness 
on  the  throne — hopeless  of  the  future,  and  with  dangers 
accumulating  on  every  side,  the  Second  Century  came  to 
an  end,  leaving  the  amazing  contrast  between  its  mise* 
rable  close  and  the  long  period  of  its  prosperity  by  which 
it  will  be  remembered  in  all  succeeding  time. 


THIRD  CENTURY. 


iSmperorjsf. 

SiPTiMiDS  Severus — [continued.)  Fifth  Persecution  oi 
A.D.  the  Christians. 

211.  Caracalla  and  Geta. 

217.  Macrinus. 

218  Heliogabalus. 

222.  Alexander  Severus. 

235.  Maximin.    Sixth  Persecution. 

238.  Maximus  and  Balbinus. 

238.  Gordian. 

244.  Philip  the  Arabian. 

249.  Decius.    Seventh  Persecution. 

251.  ViBius. 

251.  Gallcs. 

254.  Valerian.     Eighth  Persecution. 

260.  Gailien. 

268.  Claudius  the  Second. 

270.  AuRELiAN.     Ninth  Persecution. 

275.  Tacitus. 

276.  Florian. 

277.  Probus. 

278.  Cabus. 

278.        Carinus  and  Numerian. 

284.        Diocletian  and  Maximian.    Tenth  and  Last  Por0» 
cution. 

Clement  of  Alexandria,   Dion  Cassius,  Origen,   Cvprian, 

r*LOTINUS,    LONGINUS,    HlPPOLITUS    PORTUENSIS,    JuLIUS    AFRICA- 

HUB  Celsus,  Origen. 


THE  THIRD  CENTUEY. 

ANARCHY  AND   CONFUSION — GROWTH   OF   THE   CHRISTIAS 
CHURCH. 

We  are  now  in  the  twelfth  year  of  the  Third  Century. 
Septimius  Severus  has  died  at  York,  and  Caracalla  is  let 
Loose  like  a  famished  tiger  upon  Eome.  He  invites  his 
brother  Geta  to  meet  him  to  settle  some  family  feud  in 
the  apartment  of  their  mother,  and  stabs  him  in  her 
arms.  The  rest  of  his  reign  is  worthy  of  this  heginning, 
and  it  would  be  fatiguing  and  perplexing  to  the  memory 
to  record  his  other  acts.  Fortunately  it  is  not  required; 
nor  is  it  necessary  to  follow  minutely  the  course  of  his 
successors.  "What  we  require  is  only  a  general  view  of 
the  proceedings  of  this  century,  and  that  can  he  gained 
without  wading  through  all  the  blood  and  horrors  with 
which  the  throne  of  the  world  is  surrounded.  Conclu- 
sive evidence  was  obtained  in  this  century  that  the 
organization  of  Eoman  government  was  defective  in 
securing  the  first  necessities  of  civilized  life.  When  we 
talk  of  civilization,  we  are  too  apt  to  limit  the  meaning 
of  the  word  to  its  mere  embellishments,  such  as  arts  and 
sciences;  hut  the  true  distinction  hetween  it  and  har- 
barism  is,  that  the  one  presents  a  state  of  society  under 
the  protection  of  just  and  well-administered  law,  and 
the  other  is  left  to  the  chance  government  of  brute  force. 
There  was  now  great  wealth  in  Eome — great  luxury — 
a  high  admiration  of  painting,  poetry,  and  sculpture — 
much  learning,  and  prohably  infinite  refinement  of 
manners  and  address.     But  it  was  not  a  civilized  state 


W  THIRD   CENTURY. 

Life  was  of  no  value — property  was  not  secure.  A 
series  of  madmen  seized  supreme  authority,  and  over- 
threw  all  the  distinctions  between  right  and  wrong.. 
Murder  was  legalized,  and  rapine  openly  encouraged. 
It  is  a  sort  of  satisfaction  to  perceive  that  few  of  those 
atrocious  malefactors  escaped  altogether  the  punishment 
of  their  crimes.  If  Caracalla  slays  his  brother  and 
orders  a  peaceable  province  to  be  destroyed,  there  is  a 
Macrinus  at  hand  to  put  the  monster  to  death.  But 
Macrinus,  relying  on  the  goodness  of  his  inten- 
tions, neglects  the  soldiery,  and  is  supplanted  by 
a  boy  of  seventeen — ^so  handsome  that  he  won  the  admi- 
ration of  the  rudest  of  the  legionaries,  and  so  gentle 
and  captivating  in  his  manners  that  he  strengthened 
the  eflfect  his  beauty  had  produced.  He  was  priest  of 
the  Temple  of  the  Sun  at  Emesa  in  Phoenicia;  and  by 
the  arts  of  his  grandmother,  who  was  sister  to  one  of 
the  former  empresses,  and  the  report  that  she  cun- 
ningly  spread  abroad  that  he  was  the  son  of  their 
favourite  Caracalla,  the  afifection  of  the  dissolute  soldiery 
knew  no  bounds.  Macrinus  was  soon  slaughtered,  and 
the  long-haired  priest  of  Baal  seated  on  the  throne  of 
the  Cajsars,  under  the  name  of  HeUogabalus.  As  might 
be  expected,  the  sudden  alteration  in  his  fortunes  was 
fatal  to  his  character.  All  the  excesses  of  his  prede- 
cessors were  surpassed.  Ilis  extravagance  raj^idly  ex- 
hausted the  resources  of  the  empire.  His  floors  were 
spread  with  gold-dust.  His  dresses,  jewels,  and  golden 
ornaments  were  never  woni  twice,  but  went  to  his 
slaves  and  parasites.  He  created  his  grandmother  a 
member  of  the  Senate,  with  rank  next  after  the  consuls; 
and  established  a  rival  Senate,  composed  of  ladies,  pre- 
sided over  by  his  mother.  Their  jurisdiction  was  not 
very  hurtful  to  the  State,  for  it  only  extended  to  dresses 
•nd  precedence  of  ranks,  and  the  etiquette  to  be  observed 


ALEXANDER   SEVERUS.  W 

ID  viaiting  each  other.  But  the  evil  dispositions  of  tho 
emperor  were  shown  in  other  ways.  He  had  a  cousin  of 
tho  name  of  Alexander,  and  entertained  an  unbounded 
jealousy  of  his  popularity  with  tho  soldiers.  Attempts 
at  poison  and  direct  assassination  were  resorted  to  in 
vain.  Tho  public  sympathy  began  to  rise  in  his  favour. 
Tho  Praetorians  formally  took  him  under  their  protec- 
tion; and  when  Heliogabalus,  reckless  of  their  menaces, 
again  attempted  tho  life  of  Alexander,  the  troops  re- 
volted, proclaimed  death  to  the  infatuated  emperor,  and 
slew  him  and  his  mother  at  tho  same  time. 

Alexander  was  now  enthroned — a  youth  of  sixteen ; 
gifted  with  higher   qualities  than   tho  debased 
"  century  in  which  ho  lived  could  altogether  ap- 
preciate.   But  tho  origin  of  his  noblest  sentiments  is 
traced  to  tho  teaching  he  had  received  from  his  mother, 
in  which  the  precepts  of  Christianity  were  not  omitted. 
WTien  he  appointed  tho  governor  of  a  province,  ho  pub- 
lished his  name  some  time  before,  and  requested  if  any 
one  knew  of  a  disqualification,  to  have  it  sent  in  for  his 
consideration.     "  It  is  thus  the  Christians  appoint  their 
pastors,"  he  said,  "  and  I  will  do  the  same  with  my  repre- 
sentatives."   When  his  justice,  moderation,  and  equity 
were  fully  recognised,  the  beauty  of  the  quotation,  which 
was  continually   in   his   mouth,   was   admired   by  all, 
even  though  they  were  ignorant  of  the  book  it  came 
from:  "Do  unto  others  as  you  would  that  they  should 
do  unto  you."    He  trusted  the  wisest  of  his  counsellors, 
the  great  legalists  of  tho  empire,  with  tho  introduction 
of  new  laws  to  curb  tho  wickedness  of  tho  time.     But 
the  multiplicity  of  laws  proves  tho  decline  of  states. 
fn  the  ancient  Rome  of  the  kings  and  earlier  consuls, 
the  statutes  were   contained  in  forty  decisions,  which 
wore  afterwards  enlarged  into  the  laws  of  the  Twelve 
Tables,  consisting  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  texts.     Tho 


«>  THIRD   CENTURY. 

profligacy  of  some  emperors,  the  vanity  of  others,  had 
loaded  the  statute-book  with  an  innumerable  mass  of 
edicts,  senatus-consultums,  pratorial  rescripts,  and  cus- 
tomary laws.  It  was  impossible  to  extract  order  oi 
regularity  from  such  a  chaos  of  conflicting  rules.  The 
great  work  was  left  for  a  later  prince;  at  present  we 
can  only  praise  the  goodness  of  the  emperor's  intention. 
But  Alexander,  justly  called  Severus,  from  the  simpli- 
city of  his  life  and  manners,  has  held  the  throne  too 
long.  The  Prffitorians  have  been  thirteen  years  without 
the  donation  consequent  on  a  new  accession. 

Among  the  favourite  leaders  selected  by  Alexander 
for  their  military  qualifications  was  one  Maximin,  a 
Thracian  peasant,  of  whose  strength  and  stature  incredi- 
ble things  are  told.  He  was  upwards  of  eight  feet  high, 
could  tire  down  a  horse  at  the  gallop  on  foot,  could 
break  its  leg  by  a  blow  of  his  hand,  could  overthrow 
thirty  wrestlers  without  drawing  breath,  and  maintained 
this  prodigious  force  by  eating  forty  pounds  of  meat, 
and  drinking  an  amphora  and  a  half,  or  twelve  quarts, 
of  wine.  This  giant  had  the  bravery  for  which  his 
countrymen  the  Goths  have  always  been  celebrated. 
He  rose  to  high  rank  in  the  Koman  service ;  and  when 
at  last  nothing  seemed  to  stand  between  him  and  the 
throne  but  his  patron  and  benefactor,  ambition  blinded 
him  to  every  thing  but  his  own  advancement.  He  mur- 
dered the  wise  and  generous  Alexander,  and  presented 
for  the  first  time  in  history  the  spectacle  of  a  barbarian 
master  of  the  Roman  world.  Other  emperors  had  been 
born  in  distant  portions  of  the  empire ;  an  African  had 
trampled  on  Eoman  greatness  in  the  person  of  Septi- 
mius  Severus;  a  Phoenician  priest  had  disgraced  the 
purple  in  the  person  of  Hcliogabalus ;  Africa,  however, 
was  a  Eoman  province,  and  Emesa  a  Roman  town.  But 
rore  sat  the  colossal  representative  of  the  terrible  Gotha 


MAXIMIN.  «» 

of  Thrace,  ^peaking  a  language  half  Getic,  half  Latin, 
which  no  one  could  easily  understand ;  fierce,  haughty, 
and  revengeful,  and  cherishing  a  ferocious  hatred  of  the 
subjects  "who  trembled  before  him — a  hatred  probably 
Implauled  in  him  in  his  childhood  by  the  patriotic  songs 
with  which  the  warriors  of  his  tribe  kept  alive  their 
enmity  and  contempt  for  the  Roman  name.  The  Eoman 
xutme  had  indeed  by  this  time  lost  all  its  authority.  The 
army,  recruited  from  all  parts  of  the  empire,  and  in- 
cluding a  great  number  of  barbarians  in  its  ranks,  was 
no  longer  a  bulwark  against  foreign  invasion.  Maximin, 
bestowing  the  chief  commands  on  Pannonians  and  other 
mercenaries,  treated  the  empire  as  a  conquered  country 
He  seized  on  all  the  wealth  he  could  discover — melted 
all  the  golden  statues,  as  valuable  from  their  artistic 
beauty  as  for  the  metal  of  which  they  were  composed — 
and  was  threatening  an  approach  to  Rome  to  extermi- 
nate the  Senate  and  sack  the  devoted  town.  In  this 
extremity  the  Senate  resumed  its  long-forgotten  power, 
and  named  as  emperors  two  men  of  the  name  of  Gordian 
— ^father  and  son — with  instructions  "to  resist  the 
enemy."  But  father  and  son  perished  in  a  few  weeks, 
and  still  the  terrible  Goth  came  on.  His  son,  a  giant 
like  himself,  but  beautiful  as  the  colossal  statue  of  a 
young  Apollo,  shared  in  all  the  feelings  of  his  father. 
Terrified  at  its  approaching  doom,  the  Senate  once  more 
nominated  two  men  to  the  purple,  Maximus  and  Bal- 
binus:  Balbinus,  the  favourite,  perhaps,  of  the  aristo- 
cracy, by  the  descent  he  claimed  from  an  illustrious 
ancestry;  while 'Maximus  recommended  himself  to  the 
now  perverted  taste  of  the  commonalty  by  having  been 
a  carter.  Neither  was  popular  with  the  army;  and,  to 
please  the  soldiers,  a  son  or  nephew  of  the  younger 
Gordian  was  associated  with  them  on  the  throne.  But 
nothing  could  have  resisted  the  infuriated  legions  of  the 


ro  THIRD   CENTURY. 

gigantic  Maximin;  they  were  marching  with  wonderful 
expedition  towards  their  revenge.  At  Aquileia  they 
met  an  opposition ;  the  town  shut  its  gates  and  manned 
its  walls,  for  it  knew  what  would  bo  the  fate  of  a  city 
given  up  to  tho  tender  mercies  of  the  Goths.  Mean- 
while the  approfkCh  of  tho  destroyer  produced  great 
ftgitation  in  Homo.  The  people  rose  upon  the  Prffito- 
rians,  and  enlisted  the  gladiators  on  their  side.  Many 
thousands  were  slain,  and  at  last  a  peace  was  made  by 
the  intercession  of  tho  youthful  Gordian.  Glad  of  the 
cessation  of  this  civic  tumult,  the  population  of  Borne 
betook  itself  to  the  theatres  and  shows.  Suddenly,  while 
the  games  were  going  on,  it  was  announced  that  tho 
army  before  Aquileia  nad  mutinied  and  that  both  tho 

„„,   Maximins  were  slain.     All  at  once  the   amphi- 
A.D.  235.  ^ 

theatre  was  emptied ;  by  an  impulse  of  grateful 

piety,  the  emperors  and  people  huri'icd  into  tho  temples 
of  the  gods,  and  offered  up  thanks  for  their  deliverance. 
The  wretched  people  were  premature  in  their  rejoicing. 
In  less  than  three  months  the  spoiled  Prajtorians  were 
offended  with  the  precaution  taken  by  the  emperors  in 
surrounding  themselves  with  German  guards.  They 
assaulted  the  palace,  and  put  Maximus  and  Balbinus 
to  death.  Gordian  the  Third  was  now  sole  emperor, 
and  the  final  struggle  with  the  barbarians  drew  nearer 
and  nearer. 

Constantly  crossing  the  frontiers,  and  willingly  re- 
ceived in  the  Eoman  ranks,  the  communities  who  had 
been  long  settled  on  the  Eoman  confines  were  not  the 
utterly  uncultivated  tribes  which  their-name  would  seem 
lo  denote.  There  was  a  conterminous  civilization  which 
made  the  two  peoples  scarcely  distingliishable  at  their 
point  of  contact,  but  which  died  off  as  the  distance 
fi'om  the  Eoman  line  increased.  Thus,  an  original  settler 
OP  tho  eastern  bank  of  the  Ehine  was  probably  as  cul* 


BARBARIANS.  71 

tivatcd  and  intelligent  as  a  Eoman  colonist  on  the  other 
side ;  but  farther  up,  at  the  Weser  and  the  Elbe,  the  old 
ferocity  and  roughness  remained.  Fresh  importations 
from  the  unknown  East  were  continually  taking  place ; 
the  dwellers  in  the  plains  of  Pannonia,  now  habituated 
to  pasturage  and  trade,  found  safety  from  the  hordes 
which  pressed  upon  them  from  their  o^vn  original  settle- 
ments beyond  the  Caucasus,  by  crossing  the  boundary 
river ;  and  by  this  means  the  banks  were  held  by  cognate 
but  hostUo  peoples,  who  could,  however,  easily  bo  re- 
conciled by  a  joint  ejcpedition  against  Rome.  Now  com- 
binations had  taken  place  in  the  interior  of  the  great 
expanses  not  included  in  the  Roman  limits.  The  Ger- 
mans wore  no  longer  the  natural  enemies  of  the  empire. 
They  furnished  many  soldiers  for  its  defence,  and  several 
chiefs  to  command  its  forces.  But  all  round  the  external 
circuit  of  those  half-conciliated  tribes  rose  up  vast  con- 
federacies of  warlike  nations.  There  were  Choruski,  and 
Sicambri,  and  Attuarians,  and  Bruttuarians,  and  Catti, 
all  regularly  enrolled  under  the  name  of  "  Franks,"  or 
the  brave.  The  Sarmatians  or  Sclavos  performed  the 
same  part  on  the  northeastern  frontier;  and  wo  have 
already  seen  that  the  irresistible  Goths  had  found  their 
way,  one  by  one,  across  the  boundary,  and  cleared  the 
path  for  their  successors.  The  old  enemies  of  Eome  on 
the  extreme  east,  the  Parthians,  had  fallen  under  the 
power  of  a  renovated  mountain-race,  and  of  a  king,  who 
founded  the  great  dynasty  of  the  Sassanides,  and  claimed 
the  restoration  of  Egypt  and  Armenia  as  ancient  de- 
pendencies of  the  Persian  crown.  To  resist  aJl  these, 
there  was,  in  the  year  241,  only  a  gentle-tempered  youth, 
dressed  in  the  f>urple  which  had  so  lost  its  original  gran- 
deur, and  relying  for  his  guidance  on  the  wisdom  of  his 
tutors,  and  for  his  life  on  the  forbearance  of  the  Pra3to- 
rians.    The  tutors  were  wise  and  just,  and  victory  at 


'^  THIRD   CENTURY. 

first  gave  some  sort  of  dignity  to  the  reign  of  Gordian 
The  Franks  were  conquered  at  Mayence ;  but  Gordian 
244  ttree  years  after,  was  murdered  in  the  East ;  and 
Philip,  an  Arabian,  whose  father  had  been  a 
robber  of  the  desert,  was  acknowledged  emperor  by 
senate  and  army.  Treachery,  ambition,  and  murder 
pursued  their  course.  There  was  no  succession  to  the 
throne.  Sometimes  one  general,  luckier  or  wiser  than 
the  rest,  appeared  the  sole  governor  of  the  State.  At 
other  times  there  were  numberless  rivals  all  claiming 
the  empire  and  threatening  vengeance  on  their  op- 
ponents. Yet  amidst  this  tumult  of  undistinguishable 
pretenders,  fortune  placed  at  the  head  of  affairs  some 
of  the  best  and  greatest  men  whom  the  Eoman  world 
ever  produced.  There  was  Yalerian,  whom  all  parties 
.  agreed  in  considering  the  most  virtuous  and  en- 
lightened man  of  his  time.  Scarcely  any  oppo- 
sition was  made  to  his  promotion ;  and  yet,  with  all  his 
good  qualities,  he  was  the  man  to  whom  Eome  owed  the 
greatest  degradation  it  had  yet  sustained.  He  was 
taken  prisoner  by  Sapor,  the  Persian  king,  and  con- 
demned, with  other  captive  monarchs,  to  draw  the  car 
of  his  conqueror.  No  offers  of  ransom  could  deliver  the 
brave  and  unfortunate  prince.  He  died  amid  his  de- 
riding enemies,  who  hung  up  his  skin  as  an  offering  to 
their  gods.  Then,  after  some  years,  in  which  there  were 
twenty  emperors  at  one  time,  with  army  drawn  up 
against  army,  and  cities  delivered  to  massacre  and  rapine 
by  all  parties  in  turn,  there  arose  one  of  the  strong 
minds  which  make  themselves  felt  throughout  a  whole 
period,  and  arrest  for  a  while  the  downward  course  of 
states.  The  emperor  Probus,  son  of  a  man  who 
had  originally  been  a  gardener,  had  distinguished 
himself  under  Aurelian,  the  conqueror  of  Palmyra,  and, 
having  survived  all  his  competitors,  had  time  to  devote 


PROBUS.  78 

nimself  to  the  restoration  of  discipline  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  purer  laws.  His  victories  over  the  encroaching 
barbarians  were  decided,  but  ineffectual.  New  myi'iada 
still  pressed  forward  to  take  the  place  of  the  slain.  On 
one  occasion  he  crossed  the  Ehine  in  pursuit  of  the  re- 
volted Germans,  overtook  them  at  the  Necker,.  and 
killed  in  battle  four  hundred  thousand  men.  Nir  e  kings 
threw  themselves  at  the  emperor's  feet.  Many  thousand 
barbarians  enlisted  in  the  Eoman  army.  Sixty  great 
cities  were  taken,  and  made  offerings  of  golden  crowns. 
The  whole  country  was  laid  waste.  "  There  was  nothing 
left,"  he  boasted  to  the  Senate,  "  but  bare  fields,  as  if 
they  had  never  been  cultivated."  So  much  the  worse 
for  the  Eomans.  The  barbarians  looked  with  keener 
eyes  across  the  river  at  the  rich  lands  which  had  never 
been  ravaged,  and  sent  messages  to  all  the  tribes  in  the 
distant  forests,  that,  having  no  occasion  for  pruning- 
hooks,  they  had  turned  them  into  swords.  But  Probus 
showed  a  still  more  doubtful  policy  in  other  quarters. 
When  he  conquered  the  Yandals  and  Burgundians,  he 
3ent  their  warriors  to  keep  the  Caledonians  in  subjection 
on  the  Tyne.  The  Britons  he  transported  to  Moesia  or 
Greece.  What  intermixtures  of  race  may  have  arisen 
from  these  transplantations  it  is  impossible  to  say ;  but 
the  one  feeling  was  common  to  all  the  barbarians,  that 
Eome  was  weak  and  they  were  strong.  He  settled  a 
large  detachment  of  Franks  on  the  shores  of  the  Black 
Sea ;  and  of  these  an  almost  incredible  but  well-authen- 
ticated story  is  told.  They  seized  or  built  themselves 
boats.  They  swept  through  the  Dardanelles,  and  ravaged 
the  isles  of  Greece.  They  pursued  their  piratical  career 
down  the  Mediterranean,  passed  the  pillars  of  Hercules 
into  the  Great  Sea,  and,  rounding  Spain  and  France,  rowed 
np  the  Elbe  into  the  midst  of  their  astonished  country- 
men, who  had  long  given  them  up  for  dead.  A  fatal 
4 


74 


THIRD   CENTURY. 


adventure  this  for  the  safety  of  the  Eoman  shores ;  for 
there  were  the  wild  fishermen  of  Friesland,  and  the 
audacious  Angles  of  Schleswig  and  Holstein,  who  heard 
of  this  strange  exploit,  and  saw  that  no  coast  was  too 
distant  to  be  reached  by  their  oar  and  sail.  But  if  these 
forced  settlements  of  barbarians  on  Eoman  soil  were  im- 
politic, the  generous  Probus  did  not  feel  their  bad  effect. 
His  warlike  qualities  awed  his  foes,  and  his  inflexible 
justice  was  appreciated  by  the  hardy  warriors  of  the 
North,  who  had  not  yet  sunk  under  the  debasing  civili- 
zation of  Rome.  In  Asia  his  arms  were  attended  with 
equal  success.  He  subdued  the  Persians,  and  extended 
his  conquests  into  Ethiopia  and  the  farthest  regions  of 
the  East,  bringing  back  some  of  its  conquered  natives  to 
swell  the  triumph  at  Eome  and  terrify  the  citizens  with 
their  strange  and  hideous  appearance.  But  Probus  him- 
self must  yield  to  the  law  which  regulated  the  fate 
of  Roman  emperors.  He  died  by  treachery  and  the 
Bword.  All  that  the  empire  could  do  was  to  join  in  the 
epitaph  pronounced  over  him  by  the  barbarians,  "  Here 
lies  the  emperor  Probus,  whose  life  and  actions  corre- 
t^ponded  to  his  name." 

Three  or  four  more  fantastic  figures,  "  which  the  like- 
ness of  a  kingly  crown  have  on,"  pass  before  our  eyes, 
and  at  last  we  observe  the  powerful  and  substantial  form 
„„,  of  Diocletian,  and  feel  once  more  we  have  to  do 

A.D.  284.  ' 

with  a  real  man.  A  Druidess,  we  are  told,  had 
prophesied  that  he  should  attain  his  highest  wish  if  he 
killed  a  wild  boar.  In  all  his  hunting  expeditions  he 
was  constantly  on  the  look-out,  spear  in  hand,  for  an  en- 
counter with  the  long-tusked  monster.  Unluckily  for  a 
man  who  had  offended  Diocletian  before,  and  who  had 
basely  murdered  his  predecessor,  his  name  was  Aper ; 
and  unluckily,  also,  aper  is  Latin  for  a  boar.  This  fact 
will  perhaps  be  thought  to  account  for  the  prophecy.   It 


TWO   EMPERORS.  f% 

accounts,  at  all  events,  for  its  fulfilment  j  for,  the  wretched 
Aper  being  led  before  the  throne,  Diocletian  descended 
the  steps  and  plunged  a  dagger  into  his  chest,  exclaim- 
ing, "  I  have  killed  the  wild  boar  of  the  prediction." 
This  is  a  painful  example  of  how  unlucky  it  is  to  have 
a  name  that  can  bo  punned  upon.  Determined  to  soeure 
the  support  of  what  he  thought  the  strongest  body  in 
the  State,  he  gratified  the  priests  by  the  severest  of  all 
the  many  persecutions  to  which  the  Christians  had  been 
exposed.  By  way  of  further  showing  his  adhesion  to 
the  old  faith,  he  solemnly  assumed  the  name  of  Jove, 
and  bestowed  on  his  partner  on  the  throne  the  inferior 
title  of  Hercules.  In  spite  of  these  truculent  and  absurd 
proceedings,  Diocletian  was  not  altogether  destitute  of 
the  softer  feelings.  The  friend  he  associated  with  him 
on  the  throne — dividing  the  empire  between  them  as  too 
large  a  burden  for  one  to  sustain — was  called  Maximian. 
They  had  both  originally  been  slaves,  and  had  neither 
of  them  received  a  liberal  education.  Yet  they  pro- 
tected the  arts,  they  encouraged  literature,  and  were  the 
patrons  of  modest  merit  wherever  it  could  bo  found. 
They  each  adopted  a  Ccesar,  or  lieutenant  of  the  empire, 
and  hoped  that,  by  a  legal  division  of  duties  among  four, 
the  ambition  of  their  generals  would  be  prevented.  But 
the  limits  of  the  empire  were  too  extended  even  for  the 
vigilance  of  them  all.  In  Britain,  Carausius  raised  the 
standard  of  revolt,  giving  it  the  noble  name  of  national 
independence ;  and,  with  the  instinctive  wisdom  which 
has  been  the  safeguard  of  our  island  ever  since,  he 
rested  his  whole  chance  of  success  upon  his  fleet.  Inva- 
sion was  rendered  impossible  by  the  care  with  which  he 
guarded  the  shore,  and  it  is  not  inconceivable  that  even 
at  that  early  time  the  maritime  career  of  Britain  might 
have  been  begun  and  maintained,  if  treason,  as  usual, 
had  not  cut  short  the  efforts  of  Carausius,  who  was  soon 


f^  THIRD   CENTURY. 

after  murdered  by  his  friend  Allectus.  The  subdivision 
of  the  empire  was  a  successful  experiment  as  regarded 
its  external  safety,  but  within,  it  was  the  cause  of  bitter 
complaining.  There  were  four  sumptuous  courts  to  be 
maintained,  and  four  imperial  armies  to  be  paid.  Taxes 
rose,  and  allegiance  waxed  cold.  The  Caesars  were 
young,  and  looked  probably  with  an  evil  eye  on  the  two 
old  men  who  stood  between  them  and  the  name  of  em- 
peror. However  it  may  be,  after  many  victories  and 
much  domestic  trouble,  Diocletian  resolved  to  lay  aside 
the  burden  of  empire  and  retire  into  private  life.  His 
colleague  Maximian  felt,  or  affected  to  feel,  the  same 
distaste  for  power,  and  on  the  same  day  they  quitted  the 
purple;  one  at  Nicomedia,  the  other  at  Milan.  Diocletian 
retired  to  Salona,  a  town  in  his  native  Dalmatia,  and 
occupied  himself  with  rural  pursuits.  He  was  asked 
after  a  while  to  reassume  his  authority,  but  he  said  to 
the  persons  who  made  him  the  request,  "I  wish  you 
would  come  to  Salona  and  see  the  cabbages  I  have 
planted  with  my  own  hands,  and  after  that  you  would 
never  wish  me  to  remount  the  throne." 

The  characteristic  of  this  century  is  its  utter  confusion 
and  want  of  order.  There  was  no  longer  the  unity  even 
of  despotism  at  Eome  to  make  a  common  centre  round 
which  every  thing  revolved.  There  were  tyrants  and 
competitors  for  power  in  every  quarter  of  the  empire — 
no  settled  authority,  no  government  or  security,  left.  In 
the  midst  of  this  relaxation  of  every  rule  of  life,  grew 
surely,  but  unobserved,  the  Christian  Church,  which 
drew  strength  from  the  very  helplessness  of  the  civil 
state,  and  was  forced,  in  self-defence,  to  establish  a 
regular  organization  in  order  to  extend  to  its  members 
the  inestimable  benefits  of  regularity  and  law.  Under 
many  of  the  emperors  Christianity  was  proscribed ;  its 
disciples  were  put  to  excruciating  deaths,  and  their  pro- 


THE  EARLY   CHURCH.  77 

perty  confiscated;  but  at  that  very  lime  its  inner  de- 
velopment increased  and  strengthened.    The  community 
appointed  its  teachers,  its  deacons,  its  office-bearers  of 
every  kind ;  it  supported  them  in  their  endeavours — it 
yielded  to  their  directions;  and  in  time  a  certain  amount 
of  authority  was  considered  to  be  inherent  in  the  office 
of  pastor,  which  extended  beyond  the  mere  expounding 
of  the  gospel  or  administration  of  the  sacraments.     The 
chief  pastor  became  the  guide,  perhaps  the  judge,  of  the 
whole  flock.     While  it  is  absurd,  therefore,  in  those  dis- 
astrous times  of  weakness  and  persecution  to  talk  in 
pompous  terms  of  the  succession  of  the  Bishops  of  Rome, 
and  make  out  vain  catalogues  of  lordly  prelates  who 
sat  on  the  throne  of  St.  Peter,  it  is  incontestable  that, 
from  the  earliest  period,  the   Christian   converts  held 
their  meetings — ^by  stealth  indeed,  and  under  fear  of 
detection — and  obeyed  certain  canons  of  their  own  con- 
stitution.   These  secret  associations  rapidly  spread  their 
ramifications  into  every  great  city  of  the  empire.    When 
by  the  friendship,  or  the  fellowship,  of  the  emperor,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  Arabian  Philip,  a  pause  was  given  to 
their  fears  and  sufferings,  certain  buildings  were   set 
apart  for  their  religious  exercises ;  and  wo  read,  during 
this  century,  of  basilicas,  or  churches,  in  Pome  and  other 
towns.     The  subtlety  of  the  Greek  intellect  had  already 
led  to  endless  heresies  and  the  wildest  departures  from 
the  simplicity  of  the  gospel.     The  Western  mind  was 
more  calm,  and  better  adapted  to  be  the  lawgiver  of  a 
new  order  of  society  composed  of  elements  so  rough  and 
discordant  as  the  barbarians,  whoso  approach  was  now 
inevitably  foreseen.    With  its  well-defined  hierarchy — 
its  graduated  ranks,  and  the  fitness  of  the  offices  for  the 
purposes  of  their  creation ;   with  its  array  of  martyrs 
ready  to  suffer,  and  clear-headed  leaders  fitted  to  com- 
mand, the  Western  Church  could  look  calmly  forward 


^8  THIRD    CENTURY. 

to  the  time  when  its  organization  would  make  it  the 
most  powerful,  or  perhaps  the  only,  body  in  the  State ; 
and  so  early  as  the  middle  of  this  century  ihe  seeds  of 
worldly  ambition  developed  themselves  in  a  schism,  not 
on  a  point  of  doctrine,  but  on  the  possession  of  authority. 
A  double  nomination  had  made  the  anomalous  appoint- 
ment of  two  chief  pastors  at  the  same  time.  Neither 
would  yield,  and  each  had  his  supporters.  All  were 
binder  the  ban  of  the  civil  power.  They  had  recourse 
to  spiritual  weapons;  and  we  read,  for  the  first  time  in 
ecclesiastical  history,  of  mutual  excommunications.  No- 
vatian — under  his  breath,  however,  for  fear  of  being 
thrown  to  the  wild  beasts  for  raising  a  disturbance — 
thundered  his  anathemas  against  Cornelius  as  an  in- 
truder, while  Cornelius  retorted  by  proclaiming  l^ova- 
tian  an  impostor,  as  he  had  not  the  concurrence  of  the 
people  in  his  election.  This  gives  us  a  convincing  proof 
of  the  popular  form  of  appointing  bishops  or  presbyters 
in  those  early  days,  and  prepares  us  for  the  energy  with 
which  the  electors  supported  the  authority  of  their 
favourite  priests. 

But,  while  this  new  internal  element  was  spreading 
life  among  the  decayed  institutions  of  the  empire,  we 
have,  in  this  century,  the  first  appearance,  in  great 
force,  of  the  future  conquerors  and  renovators  of  the 
body  politic  from  without.  It  is  pleasant  to  think  that 
the  centuries  cast  themselves  more  and  more  loose  from 
their  connection  with  Eome  after  this  date,  and  that  the 
barbarians  can  vindicate  a  separate  place  in  history  for 
themselves.  In  the  first  century,  the  bad  emperor? 
broke  the  strength  of  Eome  by  their  cruelty  and  extrava- 
gance. In  the  second  century,  the  good  emperors  car- 
ried  on  the  work  of  weakening  the  empire  by  the  soft- 
ening and  enervating  effects  of  their  gentle  and  pro- 
toctive  policy.    The  third  century  unites  the  evil  qualities 


BARBARIAN  TRIERS.  79 

of  the  other  two,  for  the  people  were  eq[ually  rendered 
incapable  of  defending  themselves  by  the  unheard-of 
atrocities  of  some  of  the  tyrants  who  oppressed  them 
and  the  mistaken  measures  of  the  more  benevolent 
fulers,  in  committing  the  guardianship  of  the  citizens  to 
the  Bwords  of  a  foreign  soldiery,  leaving  them  but  the 
wretched  alternative  of  being  ravaged  and  massacred 
by  an  irruption  of  savage  tribes  or  pillaged  and  insulted 
by  those  in  the  emperor's  pay. 

The  empire  had  long  been  surrounded  by  its  foes.  It 
will  suffice  to  read  the  long  list  of  captives  who  were 
led  in  triumph  behind  the  car  of  Aurelian  when  he  re- 
turned  from  foreign  war,  to  see  the  fearful  array 
*  of  harsh-sounding  names  which  have  afterwards 
been  softened  into  those  of  great  and  civilized  nations. 
It  is  in  following  the  course  of  some  of  these  that  wo 
3hall  see  how  the  present  distribution  of  forces  in  Europe 
took  place,  and  escape  from  the  polluted  atmosphere  of 
Imperial  Eome.  In  that  memorable  triumph  appeared 
Groths,  Alans,  Roxolans,  Franks,  Sarmatians,  "Vandal s, 
AUemans,  Arabs,  Indians,  Bactrians,  Iberians,  Saracens, 
Armenians,  Persians,  Palmyreans,  Egyptians,  and  ten 
Gothic  women  dressed  in  men's  apparel  and  fully  armed. 
These  were,  perhaps,  the  representatives  of  a  large  body 
of  female  warriors,  and  are  a  sign  of  the  recent  settle- 
ment of  the  tribe  to  which  they  belonged.  They  had 
not  yet  given  up  the  habits  of  their  march,  where  all 
were  equally  engaged  in  carrying  the  property  and  arms 
of  the  nation,  and  where  the  females  encouraged  the 
young  men  of  the  expedition  by  witnessing  and  some- 
times sharing  their  exploits  in  battle. 

The  triumph  of  Probus,  when  only  seven  years  had 
passed,  presents  us  with  a  list  of  the  same  peoples,  often 
conquered  but  never  subdued.  Their  defeats,  indeed, 
had  the  double  effect  of  showing  to  them  their  own 


80  THIRD   CENTURY. 

ability  to  recruit  their  forces,  and  of  strengthening  the 
degraded  people  of  Eome  in  the  belief  of  their  invinci- 
bility. After  the  loss  of  a  battle,  the  Gothic  or  Burgun- 
dian  chief  fell  back  upon  the  confederated  tribes  in  his 
rear ;  a  portion  of  his  army  cither  visited  Eome  in  tho 
character  of  captives,  or  enlisted  in  the  ranks  of  the 
conquerors.  In  either  ease,  the  wealth  of  the  great 
city  and  the  undefended  state  of  the  empire  were  per- 
manently fixed  in  their  minds;  the  populace,  on  tho 
other  hand,  had  the  luxury  of  a  noble  show  and  double 
rations  of  bread — the  more  ambitious  of  the  emperors 
acting  on  the  professed  maxim  that  the  citizen  had  no 
duty  but  to  enjoy  the  goods  provided  for  him  by  the  go- 
verning power,  and  that  if  he  was  fed  by  public  doles,  and 
amused  with  public  games,  the  purpose  of  his  life  was 
attained.  The  idlest  man  wa^  the  safest  subject.  A 
triumph  was,  therefore,  more  an  instrument  of  degrada- 
tion than  an  encouragement  to  patriotic  exertion.  The 
name  of  Eoman  citizen  was  now  extended  to  all  the 
inhabitants  of  the  empire.  The  freeman  of  York  was  a 
Eoman  citizen.  Had  he  any  patriotic  pride  in  keeping 
the  soil  of  Italy  undivided?  The  nation  had  become 
too  diffuse  for  the  exercise  of  this  local  and  combining 
virtue.  The  love  of  country,  which  in  the  small  states 
of  Greece  secured  the  individual's  affection  to  his  native 
city,  and  yet  was  powerful  enough  to  extend  ov^r  the 
whole  of  the  Hellenic  territories,  was  lost  altogether 
when  it  was  required  to  expand  itself  over  a  region  as 
wide  as  Europe.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  empires  fall  to 
pieces  by  their  own  weight.  The  Eoman  power  broke 
up  from  within.  Its  religion  was  a  source  of  division, 
not  of  union — its  mixture  of  nations,  and  tongues,  and 
usages,  lost  their  cohesion.  And  nothing  was  left  at  the 
end  of  this  century  to  preserve  it  from  total  dissolution, 
but  the  personal  qualities  of  some  great  rulers  and  the 
memory  of  its  former  fame. 


FOURTH  CENTURY. 


iSmperors. 

A.J> 

304. 

Galerius  and  Constantius. 

305. 

Maximin. 

306. 

Constantine. 

337. 

CONSTANTINE  II.,  CONSTANS  and 

Constantius. 

361. 

Julian  the  Apostate. 

363. 

Jovian. 

A.D. 

West. 

A.D.          East. 

364. 

Valentinian.                        364.  Valens. 

367. 

Gratian. 

375. 

Valentinian  II.                   379.  Theodosius. 

395. 

HONORIUS 

395.  Arcadius. 

DoNATUs,  EuTROPius,  St.  Athanasius,  Ausonius,  ClaudiaHi 
Arnobius,  (303,)  Lactantius,  (306,)  Ecsebius,  (315,)  Arius,  (316,) 
Gregory  Nazianzen,  (320-389,)  Basil  the  Great,  Bishop  of 
Cesarea,  (330-379,)  Ambrose,  (340-397,)  Augustine  (353-429,) 
Thsodoret,  (386-457,)  Martin,  Bishop  of  Tours, 


THE  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

tDE  REMOVAL  TO  CONSTANTINOPLE — ESTABLISHMENT  Of 
CI1RI8TLANITT — APOSTASY  OF  JULIAN — SETTLEMENT  OF 
THE  GOTHS. 

As  the  memory  of  the  old  liberties  of  Rome  died  cut, 
\  nearer  approach  was  made  to  the  ostentatious  despot- 
isms of  the  East.  Aurelian,  in  270,  was  the  first  em- 
peror who  encircled  his  head  with  a  diadem ;  and  Dio- 
cletian, in  284,  formed  his  court  on  the  model  of  the 
most  gorgeous  royalties  of  Asia.  On  admission  into  his 
presence,  the  Roman  Senator,  formerly  the  equal  of  the 
ruler,  prostrated  himself  at  his  feet.  Titles  of  the  most 
unmanly  adulation  were  lavished  on  the  fortunate  slave 
or  herdsman  who  had  risen  to  supreme  power.  He  was 
clothed  in  robes  of  purple  and  violet,  and  loaded  with 
an  incalculable  wealth  of  jewels  and  gold.  It  was  from 
deep  policy  that  Diocletian  introduced  this  system. 
Ceremony  imposes  on  the  vulgar,  and  makes  intimacy 
impossible.  Etiquette  is  the  refuge  of  failing  power, 
and  compensates  by  external  show  for  inherent  weak- 
ness, as  stiffness  and  formality  are  the  refuge  of  dulness 
and  mediocrity  in  private  life.  There  was  now,  there- 
fore, seated  on  the  throne,  which  was  shaken  by  every 
commotion,  a  personage  assuming  more  majestic  rank, 
and  affecting  far  loftier  state  and  dignity,  than  Augustus 
had  ventured  on  while  the  strength  of  the  old  Republic 
gave  irresistible  force  to  the  new  empire,  or  than  the 
Anton ines  had  dreamt  of  when  the  prosperity  of  Rome 
•vas  apparently  at  its  heiejht.    But  there  was  still  some 


W  FOURTH   CENTURY. 

feeling,  if  not  of  self-respect,  at  least  of  resistance  to 
pretension,  in  the  populace  and  Senators  of  the  capital 
Diocletian  visited  Eome  but  once.  He  was  attacked  in 
lampoons,  and  ridiculed  in  satirical  songs.  His  colleague 
established  his  residence  in  the  military  post  of  Milan. 
We  are  not,  therefore,  to  feel  surprised  that  an  Oriental- 
ized authority  sought  its  natural  seat  in  the  land  of 
ancient  despotisms,  and  that  many  of  the  emperors  had 
oast  longing  eyes  on  the  beautiful  towns  of  Asia  Minor, 
and  even  on  the  far-off  cities  of  Mesopotamia,  as  more 
congenial  localities  for  their  barbaric  splendours.  By  a 
sort  of  compromise  between  his  European  origin  and 
Asiatic  tastes,  the  emperor  Constantine,  after  many 
struggles  with  his  competitors,  having  attained  the  sole 
authority,  transferred  the  seat  of  empire  from  Eome  to 
a  city  he  had  built  on  the  extreme  limits  of  Europe,  and 
only  divided  from  Asia  by  a  narrow  sea.  All  succeeding 
ages  have  agreed  in  extolling  the  situation  of  this  city, 
called,  after  its  founder,  Constantinople,  as  the  jSinest 
that  could  have  been  chosen.  All  ages,  from  the  day  of 
its  erection  till  the  hour  in  which  we  live,  have  agreed 
that  it  is  fitted,  in  the  hands  of  a  great  and  enterprising 
power,  to  be  the  metropolis  and  arbiter  of  the  world ; 
and  Constantinople  is,  therefore^  condemned  to  the 
melancholy  fate  of  being  the  useless  and  unappreciated 
capital  of  a  horde  of  irreclaimable  barbarians.  To  this 
magnificent  city  Constantine  removed  the  throne  in 
329,  and  for  nearly  a  thousand  years  after  that,  while 
Eome  was  sacked  in  innumerable  invasions,  and  all  the 
capitals  of  Europe  were  successively  occupied  by  con- 
tending armies,  Constantinople,  safe  in  her  two  narrow 
outlets,  and  rich  in  her  command  of  the  two  continents, 
continued  unconquered,  and  even  unassailed. 

Eome  was  stripped,  that  Constantinople  might  be 
Slled.     All  the  wealth  of  Italy  was  carried  across  the 


CONSTANTINOPLE.  85 

iEgean.  The  Eoman  Senator  was  invited  to  remove 
with  his  establishment.  He  found,  on  arriving  at  his 
new  home,  that  by  a  complimentary  attention  of  the 
emperor,  a  fac-simile  of  his  Eoman  palace  had  been 
prepared  for  him  on  the  Propontis.  The  seven  hills  of 
the  new  capital  responded  to  the  seven  hills  of  the  old. 
There  were  villas  for  retirement  along  the  smiling 
shores  of  the  Dardanelles  or  of  the  Bosphorus,  as  fine  in 
climate,  and  perhaps  equal  in  romantic  beauty,  to  Baise 
or  Brundusium.  There  was  a  capital,  as  noble  a  piece 
of  architecture  as  the  one  they  had  left,  but  without  the 
sanctity  of  its  thousand  years  of  existence,  or  the  glory 
of  its  unnumbered  triumphs.  One  omission  was  the 
subject  of  remark  and  lamentation.  The  temples  were 
nowhere  to  be  seen.  The  images  of  the  gods  were  left 
at  Kome  in  the  solitude  of  their  deserted  shrines,  for 
Constantino  had  determined  that  Constantinople  should, 
from  its  very  foundation,  be  the  residence  of  a  Christian 
people.  Churches  were  built,  and  a  priesthood  ap- 
pointed. Yet,  with  the  policy  which  characterized  the 
Church  at  that  time,  he  made  as  little  change  as  possible 
in  the  external  forms.  There  is  still  extant  a  transfer 
of  certain  properties  from  the  old  establishment  to  the 
new.  There  are  contributions  of  wax  for  the  candles, 
of  frankincense  and  myrrh  for  the  censers,  and  vestures 
for  the  officiating  priests  as  before.  Only  the  object  of 
worship  is  changed,  and  the  images  of  the  heathen  gods 
and  heroes  are  replaced  with  statues  of  the  apostles  and 
martyrs. 

It  is  difficult  to  gather  a  true  idea  of  this  first  of  the 
Christian  emperors  from  the  historians  of  after-times. 
The  accounts  of  him  by  contemporary  writers  are  equally 
conflicting.  The  favourers  of  the  old  superstition  de- 
scribe him  as  a  monster  of  perfidy  and  cruelty.  The 
Church,  j^aised  to  supremacy  by  his  favour,  sees  nothing 


86  FOURTH   CENTURY. 

in  him  but  the  greatest  of  men — ^the  seer  of  visions,  the 
visible  favourite  of  the  Almighty,  and  the  predestined 
overthrower  of  the  powers  of  evil.  The  easy  credulity 
of  an  emancipated  people  believed  whatever  the  flattery 
of  the  courtiers  invented.  His  mother  Helena  made  a 
journey  to  Jerusalem,  and  was  rewarded  for  the  pious 
pilgrimage  by  the  discovery  of  the  True  Cross.  Chapels 
and  altars  were  raised  upon  all  the  places  famous  in 
Christian  story;  relics  were  collected  from  all  quarters, 
and  we  are  early  led  to  fear  that  the  simplicity  of  the 
gospel  is  endangered  by  its  approach  to  the  throne, 
and  that  Constan tine's  object  was  rather  to  raise  and 
strengthen  a  hierarchy  of  ecclesiastical  supporters  than 
to  give  full  scope  to  the  doctrine  of  truth.  But  not  the 
less  wonderful,  not  the  less  by  the  divine  appointment, 
was  this  unhoped-for  triumph  of  Christianity,  that  its 
advancement  formed  part  of  the  ambitious  scheme  of  a 
worldly  and  unprincipled  conqueror.  Eather  it  may  be 
taken  as  one  among  the  thousand  proofs  with  which 
history  presents  us,  that  the  greatest  blessings  to  man- 
kind are  produced  irrespective  of  the  character  or  quali- 
ties of  the  apparent  author.  A  warrior  is  raised  in  the 
desert  when  required  to  be  let  loose  upon  a  worn-out 
society  as  the  scourge  of  God ;  a  blood-stained  soldier 
is  placed  on  the  throne  of  the  world  when  the  tim^  has 
come  for  the  earthly  predominance  of  the  gospel.  But 
neither  is  Attila  to  be  blamed  nor  Constantine  to  be 
praised. 

It  was  the  spirit  of  hia  system  of  government  to  form 
every  society  on  a  strictly  monarchical  model.  Thera 
was  everywhere  introduced  a  clearly-defined  subordina- 
tion of  ranks  and  dignities,  Diocletian,  we  saw,  sur- 
rounded the  throne  with  a  state  and  ceremony  which 
kept  the  imperial  person  sacred  from  the  common  gaze. 
Constantine  perfected  his  work  by  establishing  a  titled 


NEW   NOBILITY.  87 

nobility,  who  were  to  stand  between  the  throne  and  the 
people,  giving  dignity  to  the  one,  and  impressing  fresh 
awe  upon  the  other.  In  all  previous  ages  it  had  been 
the  office  that  gave  importance  to  the  man.  To  be  a 
member  of  the  Senate  was  a  mark  of  distinction ;  a  long 
descent  from  a  great  historic  name  was  looked  on  with 
respect ;  and  the  heroic  deeds  of  the  thousand  years  of 
Roman  struggle  had  founded  an  aristocracy  which  owed 
its  high  position  either  to  personal  actions  or  hereditary 
claims.  But  now  that  the  emperors  had  so  long  con- 
centrated in  themselves  all  the  great  offices  of  the  State 
— now  that  the  bad  rulers  of  the  first  centuiy  had  de- 
graded the  Senate  by  filling  it  with  their  creatures,  the 
good  rulers  of  the  second  century  had  made  it  merely 
the  recorder  of  their  decrees,  and  the  anarchy  of  the 
third  century  had  changed  or  obliterated  its  functions 
altogether — there  was  no  way  left  to  the  ambitious 
Roman  to  distinguish  himself  except  by  the  favour  of 
the  emperor.  The  throne  became,  as  it  has  since  con- 
tinued in  all  strictly  monarchical  countries,  the  fountain 
of  honour.  It  was  not  the  people  who  could  name  a 
man  to  the  consulship  or  appoint  him  to  the  command 
of  an  army.  It  was  not  even  in  the  power  of  the 
emperor  to  find  offices  of  dignity  for  all  whom  ho  wished 
to  v^vance.  So  a  method  was  discovered  by  which 
Vanity  or  friendship  could  be  gratified,  and  employment 
be  reserved  for  the  deserving  at  the  same  time.  Instead 
of  endangering  an  expedition  against  the  Parthians  by 
intrusting  it  to  a  rich  and  powerful  courtier  who  desired 
to  have  the  rank  of  general,  the  emperor  simply  named 
him  Nobilissimus,  or  Patricius,  or  Illustris,  and  the 
gi'atified  favourite,  the  "  most  noble,"  the  "  patrician," 
or  the  "  illustrious,"  took  place  with  the  highest  officers 
of  the  State.  A  certain  title  gave  him  equal  rank  with 
the  Senator,  the  judge,  or  the  consul.     The  diversity  of 


^  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

these  honorary  distinctions  became  very  great  There 
were  the  clarissimi — the  perfectissimi — and  the  egregii 
— bearing  the  same  relative  dignity  in  the  court-guide 
of  the  fourth  century,  as  the  dukes,  marquises,  earls, 
and  viscounts  of  the  peerage-books  of  the  present  day. 
But  flo  much  did  all  distinction  flow  from  proximity  to 
the  throne,  that  all  these  high-sounding  names  owed 
their  value  to  the  fact  of  their  being  bestowed  on  the 
associates  of  the  sovereign.  The  word  Count,  which 
is  still  the  title  borne  by  foreign  nobles,  comes  from  the 
Latin  word  which  means  "  companion."  There  was  a 
Comes,  or  Companion,  of  the  Sacred  Couch,  or  lord 
chamberlain — the  Companion  of  the  Imperial  Seiwice, 
or  lord  high  steward — a  Companion  of  the  Imperial 
Stables,  or  lord  high  constable ;  through  all  these  digni- 
taries, step  above  step,  the  glorious  ascent  extended,  till 
it  ended  in  the  Companion  of  Private  Affairs,  or  con- 
fidential secretary.  At  the  head  of  all,  sacred  and  un- 
approachable, stood  the  embodied  Power  of  the  Eoman 
world,  who,  as  he  had  given  titles  to  all  the  magnates  of 
his  court,  heaped  also  a  great  many  on  himself  His 
principal  appellation,  however,  was  not  as  in  our  degene- 
rate days  "Majesty,"  whether  "Most  Catholic,"  "Most 
Christian,"  or  "Most  Orthodox,"  but  consisted  in  the 
rather  ambitious  attribute — eternity.  "  Your  Eternity" 
was  the  phrase  addressed  to  some  miserable  individual 
whose  reign  was  ended  in  a  month.  It  was  proposed  by 
this  division  of  the  Eoman  aristocracy  to  furnish  the 
empire  with  a  body  for  show  and  a  body  for  use ;  the 
latter  consisting  of  the  real  generals  of  the  armies  and 
administrators  of  the  provinces.  And  with  this  view 
the  two  were  kept  distinct;  but  military  discipline 
Buffered  by  this  partition.  The  generals  became  discon- 
tented when  they  saw  wealth  and  dignities  heaped  upon 
the  titular  nobles  of  the  court;  and  to  prevent  the  danger 


TAXES.  W 

arising  from  ill  will  among  the  legions  on  the  frontier, 
the  emperor  withdrew  the  best  of  his  soldiers  from  the 
posts  where  they  kept  the  barbarians  in  check,  and 
entirely  destroyed  their  military  spirit  by  separating 
them  into  small  bodies  and  stationing  them  in  towns 
This  exposed  the  empire  to  the  foreign  foes  who  stil) 
menaced  it  from  the  other  side  of  the  boundary,  and 
gave  fresh  settlements  in  the  heart  of  the  country  to  the 
thousands  of  barbarian  youth  who  had  taken  service 
with  the  eagles.  In  every  legion  there  was  a  consider- 
able proportion  of  this  foreign  clement :  in  every  district 
of  the  empire,  therefore,  there  were  now  settled  the  ad- 
vanced guards  of  the  unavoidable  invasion.  Men  with 
barbaric  names,  which  the  Romans  could  not  pronounce, 
walked  about  Roman  towns  dressed  in  Roman  unifoi-ms 
and  clothed  with  Roman  titles.  There  were  consulars 
and  patricians  in  Ravenna  and  Naples,  whose  fathers 
had  danced  the  war-dance  of  defiance  when  beginning 
their  march  from  the  Vistula  and  the  Carpathian  range. 
All  these  troops  must  bo  supported — all  these  digni- 
taries maintained  in  luxury.  How  was  this  done? 
The  ordinary  revenue  of  the  empire  in  the  time  of  Con- 
starttine  has  been  computed  at  forty  millions  of  oui 
money  a  year.  Not  a  very  large  amount  when  you  con- 
sider the  number  of  the  population ;  but  this  is  the  sum 
which  reached  the  treasury.  The  gross  amount  must 
have  been  far  larger,  and  an  ingenious  machinery  was  in- 
vented by  which  the  tax  was  rigorously  collected ;  and 
this  m.achinery,  by  a  ludicrous  perversion  of  terras,  was 
made  to  include  one  of  the  most  numerous  classes  of  the 
artificial  nobility  created  by  the  imperial  will.  In  all 
the  towns  of  the  empire  some  little  remains  were  s  lill 
to  bo  found  of  the  ancient  municipal  government,  of 
which  practically  they  had  long  been  deprived.  There 
were  nominal  magistrates  still;   and  among  these  th« 


W>  FOURTH   CENTURY. 

Curlals  held  a  distinguished  rank.  They  were  tlie  men 
who,  in  the  days  of  freedom,  had  filled  tjie  civic  dignities 
of  thoir  native  city — ^the  aldermen,  we  should  perhapa 
call  them,  or,  more  nearly,  the  justices  of  the  peace. 
The^r  were  now  ranked  with  the  peerage,  but  with  cer- 
tain duties  attached  to  their  elevation  which  few  can  have 
regarded  in  the  light  of  privilege  or  favour.  To  qualify 
them  for  rank,  they  were  bound  to  be  in  possession  of  a 
certain  amount  of  land.  They  were,  therefore,  a  terri- 
torial aristocracy,  and  never  was  any  territorial  aris- 
tocracy more  constantly  under  the  consideration  of  the 
government.  It  was  the  duty  of  the  curials  to  distri- 
bute the  tax-papers  in  their  district ;  but,  in  addition  to 
this,  it  was  unfortunately  their  duty  to  see  that  the  sum 
assessed  on  the  town  and  neighbourhood  was  paid  up  to 
the  last  penny.  When  there  was  any  deficiency,  was 
the  emperor  to  suffer?  Were  the  nobilissimi,  the  pa- 
tricii,  the  egregii,  to  lose  their  salaries  ?  Oh,  no  !  As  long 
as  the  now  ennobled  curial  retained  an  acre  of  his  estate, 
or  could  raise  a  mortgage  on  his  house,  the  full  amount 
was  extracted.  The  tax  went  up  to  Rome,  and  the 
curial,  if  there  had  been  a  poor's  house  in  those  days^ 
would  have  gone  into  it — for  he  was  stripped  of  all.  '  His 
farm  was  seized,  his  cattle  were  escheated ;  and  when  the 
defalcation  was  very  great,  himself,  his  wife  and  children 
were  led  into  the  market  and  sold  as  slaves.  Nothing 
60  rapidly  destroyed  what  might  have  been  the  germ  of 
a  middle  class  as  this  legalized  spoliation  of  the  smaller 
landholders.  Below  this  rank  there  was  absolutely 
nothing  left  of  the  citizenship  of  ancient  times.  Artifi- 
cers and  workmen  formed  themselves  into  companies ; 
but  the  trades  were  exercised  principally  by  slaves  for 
the  benefit  of  their  owners.  These  slaves  formed  now 
by  far  the  greatest  part  of  the  Eoman  population,  and 
though  their  lot  had  gradually  become  softened  as  their 


CONDITION   OF   SLAVES.  91 

numberts  increased,  and  the  domestic  bondsman  had 
little  to  complain  of  except,  the  greatest  of  all  sorrows, 
the  loss  of  freedom,  the  position  of  the  niral  labourers 
was  still  very  bad.  There  were  some  of  them  slaves  in 
every  sense  of  the  word — mere  chattels,  which  were  not 
80  valuable  as  horse  or  dog.  But  the  fate  of  others  was 
80  far  mitigated  that  they  could  not  be  sold  separate 
from  their  family — that  they  could  not  be  sold  except 
along  with  the  land ;  and  at  last  glimpses  appear  of  a 
sort  of  rent  paid  for  certain  portions  of  the  lord's  estate 
in  full  of  all  other  requirements.  But  this  process  had 
Again  to  be  gone  through  when  many  centuries  had 
elapsed,  and  a  new  state  of  society  had  been  fully  esta- 
blished, and  it  will  be  sufEcient  to  remind  you  that  in  the 
fourth  century,  to  which  we  are  now  come,  the  Eoman 
world  consisted  of  a  monarchy  where  all  the  greatness 
and  magnificence  of  the  empire  were  concentrated  on 
the  emperor  and  his  court;  that  the  monarchical  system 
was  rapidly  pervading  tie  Church;  and  that  below 
these  two  distinct  but  connected  powers  there  was  no 
people,  properly  so  called — ^the  country  was  oppressed 
and  ruined,  and  the  ancient  dignity  of  Eome  trans- 
planted to  new  and  foreign  quarters,  at  the  sacrifice  of 
all  its  oldest  and  most  elevating  associations.  The  half- 
depopulated  city  of  Romulus  and  the  Kings — of  the 
Consuls  and  Augustus,  looked  with  ill-disguised  hatred 
and  contempt  on  the  modern  rival  which  denied  her  the 
name  of  Capital,  and  while  fresh  from  the  builder's  hand, 
robbed  her  of  the  name  of  the  Eternal  City.  "We  shall 
Bee  great  events  spring  from  this  jealousy  of  the  two 
towns.  In  the  mean  time,  we  shall  finish  our  view  of 
Constantino  by  recording  the  greatness  of  his  military 
skill,  and  merely  protest  against  the  enrolment  in  the 
list  of  saints  of  a  man  who  filled  his  family  circle  with 
blood — ^who  murdered  his  wife,  his  son,  and  his  nephew, 


92 


FOURTH   CENTURY. 


encouraged  the  contending  factions  of  the  now  dispata* 

tious  Church — gave  a  fallacipus  support  to  the  orthodox 

Athanasius,  and  died  after  a  superstitious  baptism  at 

-.^  the  hands  of  the  heretical  Arius.    An  unbiassed 

A.D.  63 1. 

judgment  must  pronounce  him  a  great  politician, 
who  played  with  both  parties  as  his  tools,  a  Chi-istian 
from  expediency  and  not  from  conviction.  It  is  a  pitv 
that  the  subserviency  of  the  Greek  communion  has 
placed  him  in  the  number  of  its  holy  witnesses,  for  we 
are  told  by  a  historian  that  when  the  emperor,  after  the 
dreadful  crimes  he  had  perpetrated,  applied  at  the 
heathen  shrines  for  expiatory  rites,  the  priests  of  the 
false  gods  had  truly  answered,  "there  are  no  purifica- 
tions for  such  deeds  as  these."  But  nothing  could  be 
refused  to  the  benefactor  of  the  Church.  The  great 
ecclesiastical  council  of  this  age,  (325),  consisting  of 
three  hundred  and  eighteen  bishops,  and  presided  over 
by  Constantino  in  person,  gave  the  ]^icene  Creed  as  the 
result  of  their  labours — a  creed  which  is  still  the  symbol 
of  Christendom,  but  which  consists  more  of  a  condemna- 
tion of  the  heresies  which  were  then  in  the  ascendant, 
than  in  the  plain  enunciation  of  the  Christian  faith.  A 
layman,  we  are  told,  an  auditor  of  the  learned  debates 
in  this  great  assembly,  a  man  of  clear  and  simple  common 
sense,  met  some  of  the  disputants,  and  addressed  them 
in  these  words: — "Arguers!  Christ  and  his  apostles  de- 
livered to  us,  not  the  art  of  disputation,  nor  empty 
eloquence,  but  a  plain  and  simple  rule  which  is  main- 
tained by  faith  and  good  works."  The  disputants,  we 
are  further  told,  were  so  struck  with  this  undeniable 
truth  that  they  acknowledged  their  error  at  once. 

But  not  yet  firm  and  impregnable  were  the  bulwarks 
of  Christianity.  While  dreaming  anchorites  in  the  deserts 
of  Thebais  were  repeating  the  results  of  fasting  and  in- 
sanity as  the  manifestation  of  divine  favour,  the  world 


JULIAN  THE   APOSTATE.  98 

iras  startled  from  its  security  by  the  appalling 
'  discovery  that  the  emperor  himself,  the  young 
and  vigorous  Julian,  was  a  follower  of  the  old  philoso- 
phers, and  a  worshipper  of  the  ancient  gods.  And  a 
dangerous  antagonist  he  was,  even  independent  of  his 
temporal  power,  fiis  personal  character  was  irre- 
proachable, his  learning  and  talent  beyond  dispute,  and 
ds  eloquence  and  dialectic  skill  sharpened  and  improved 
by  an  education  in  Athens  itself  Less  than  forty  years 
had  elifpsed  since  Constantino  pronounced  the  sentence 
of  banishment  on  the  heathen  deities.  It  was  not  pos- 
sible that  the  Christian  truth  was  in  every  instance 
received  where  the  old  falsehood  was  driven  away. 
We  may  therefore  conclude,  without  the  aid  of  historic 
evidence,  that  there  must  have  been  innumerable  dis- 
tricts— villages  in  far-off  valleys,  hidden  places  up  among 
the  hills — where  the  name  of  Christ  had  not  yet  pene- 
trated, and  all  that  was  known  was,  that  the  shrine  of 
the  local  gods  was  overthrown,  and  the  priests  of  the  old 
ceremonial  proscribed.  When  we  remember  that  the 
heathen  worship  entered  into  almost  all  the  changes  of 
the  social  and  family  life — that  its  sanction  was  necessary 
at  the  wedding — that  its  auguries  were  indispensable  at 
births — that  it  crowned  the  statue  of  the  household  god 
with  flowers — that  it  kept  alive  the  fire  upon  the  altar  of 
the  emperor — and  that  it  was  the  guardian  of  the  tombs 
of  the  departed,  as  it  had  been  the  principal  consola- 
tion during  the  funeral  rites, — we  shall  perceive  that, 
Irrespective  of  absolute  faith  in  his  system  of  belief,  the 
cessation  of  the  priest's  office  must  have  been  a  serious 
calamity.  The  heathen  establishment  had  been  enriched 
by  the  piety  or  ostentation  of  many  generations.  There 
must  have  been  still  alive  many  who  had  been  turned 
out  of  their  comfortable  temples,  many  who  viewed  the 
assumption  of  Christianity  into  the  State  as  a  political 


»*  FOURTH    CENTURY. 

engine  to  strengthen  the  tyranny  under  which  the 
nations  groaned.  We  may  see  that  self-interest  and 
patriotism  may  easily  have  been  combined  in  the  effort 
made  by  the  old  faith  to  regain  the  supremacy  it  had 
lost.  The  Emperor  Julian  endeavoured  to  lift  up  the 
fallen  gods.  He  persecuted  the  Christians,  not  with 
fire  and  sword,  but  with  contempt.  He  scorned  and 
tolerated.  He  preached  moderation,  self-dmial,  and 
purity  of  life,  and  practised  all  these  virtues  to  an 
extent  unknown  upon  a  throne,  and  even  then  unusual 
in  a  bishop's  palace. 

How  these  Christian  graces,  giving  a  charm  and 
dignity  to  the  apostate  emperor,  must  have  received  a 
still  higher  authority  from  the  painful  contrast  they 
presented  to  the  agitated  condition  and  corrupted  morals 
of  the  Christian  Church !  Everywhere  there  was  war 
and  treachery,  and  ambition  and  unbelief.  Half  the 
great  sees  were  held  by  Arians,  who  raved  against  the 
orthodox ;  and  the  other  half  were  held  by  Athanasius 
and  his  followers,  who  accused  their  adversaries  of  being 
"  more  cruel  than  the  Scythians,  and  more  irreconcilable 
than  tigers."  At  Eome  itself  there  was  an  orthodox 
bishop  and  an  Arian  rival.  It  is  not  surprising  that 
Julian,  disgusted  with  the  scenes  presented  to  him  by 
the  mutual  rage  of  the  Christian  sects,  thought  the 
surest  method  of  restoring  unity  to  the  empire  would 
be  to  silence  all  the  contending  parties  and  reintroduce 
the  peaceful  pageantries  of  the  old  Pantheon.  If  some 
of  the  fanciful  annotators  of  the  new  faith  had  allego- 
rized the  facts  of  Christianity  till  they  ceased  to  be 
facts  at  all,  Julian  performed  the  same  office  for  the 
heathen  gods.  Jupiter  and  the  rest  were  embodiments 
of  the  hidden  powers  of  nature.  Yulcan  was  the  per- 
Bonification  of  human  skill,  and  Yenus  the  beautiful  re- 
presentative of  connubial  affection.     But  men's  minds 


PAGANISM   RESTORED. 


95 


were  now  too  sharpened  with  the  contact  they  had  had 
with  the  real  to  be  satisfied  with  such  fallacies  as  these. 
Eloquent  teachers  arose,   who  separated  the    eternal 
truths  of  revelation  from  the  accessories  with  which 
they  were  temporarily  combined.  Eidicule  was  retorted 
on  the  emperor,  who  had  sneered  at  the  Christian  ser- 
vices.    Who,  indeed,  who  had  caught  the  slightest  view 
of  the  spirituality  of  Christ's  kingdom,  could  abstain 
fix>m  laughing  at  the  laborious  heathenism  of  the  master 
of  the  world  ?    He  cut  the  wood  for  sacrifice,  ho  slew 
the  goat  or  bull,  and,  falling  down  on  his  knees,  puffed 
with  distended  cheeks  the  sacred  fire.    He  marched  to 
the  temple  of  Venus  between  two  rows  of  dissolute  and 
drunken  worshippers,  striving  in  vain  by  face  and  atti- 
tude to  repress  the  shouts  of  riotous  exultation  and  the 
jeers  of  the  spectators.     Then,  wherever  he  went  he 
was  surrounded  by  pythonesses,  and  augurs,  and  fortune- 
tellers, magicians  who  could  work  miracles,  and  necro- 
mancers who  could  raise  the  dead.     When  he  restored  a 
statue  to  its  ancient  niche,  he  was  rewarded  by  a  shake 
of  its  head ;  when  he  hung  up  a  picture  of  Thetis  or 
Amphitrite,  she  winked  in  sign  of  satisfaction.     Whore 
miracles  are  not  believed,  the  performance  of  them  is 
fatal.     But  his  expenditure  of  money  in  honouring  the 
gods  was  more  real,  and  had  clearer  results.     Ue  nearly 
exhausted  the  empire  by  the  number  of  beasts  he  slew 
He  sent  enormous  offerings  to  the  shrines  of  Dodona, 
and  Delos,  and  Delphi.    He  rebuilt  the  temples,  which 
time  or  Christian  hatred  had  destroyed;  and,  by  way 
of  giving  life  to  his   new  polity,  he  condescended  to 
imitate  the  sect  he  despised,  in  its  form  of  worship,  in 
its  advocacy  of  charity,  peace,  and  good  will,  and  in  its 
institutions  of  celibacy  and  retirement,  which,  indeed, 
had  been  a  portion  of  heathen  virtue  before  it  was  ad- 
mitted into  the  Christian  Church.    But  his  affected  con 


^  FOURTH   CENTURY.     . 

tempt  soon  degenerated  into  persecution.  He  would 
have  no  soldiers  who  did  not  serve  bis  gods.  Many  re- 
signed their  swords.  He  called  the  Christians  "Gali- 
leans," and  robbed  them  of  their  property  and  despite- 
fully  used  them,  to  try  the  sincerity  of  their  faith. 
"  Does  not  your  law  command  you,"  he  said,  "  to  sub- 
mit to  injury,  and  to  renounce  your  worldly  goods? 
Well,  I  take  possession  of  your  riches  that  your  march 
X)  heaven  may  be  unencumbered."  All  moderation 
was  now  thrown  off  on  both  sides.  Resistance  was 
made  by  the  Christians,  and  extermination  threatened 
by  the  emperor.  In  the  midst  of  these  contentions  he 
was  called  eastward  to  resist  the  aggression  of  Sapor,  the 
Persian  king.  An  arrow  stretched  Julian  on  his  couch. 
He  called  round  him  his  chief  philosophers  and  priests. 
With  them,  in  imitation  of  Socrates,  he  entered  into 
deep  discussions  about  the  soul.  Nothing  more 
*  heroic  than  his  end,  or  more  eloquent  than  his 
parting  discourse.  But  death  did  not  soften  the  ani- 
mosity of  his  foes.  The  Christians  boasted  that  the 
arrow  was  sent  by  an  angel,  that  visions  had  foretold 
the  persecutor's  fall,  and  that  so  would  perish  all  the 
enemies  of  God.  The  adherents  of  the  emperor  in 
return  blamed  the  Galileans  as  his  assassins,  and  boldly 
pointed  to  Athanasius,  the  leader  of  the  Christians,  as  the 
culprit.  Athanasius  would  certainly  not  have  scrupled 
to  rid  the  world  of  such  an  Agag  and  Holofernes,  but  it 
is  more  probable  that  the  death  occurred  without  eithei 
a  miracle  or  a  murder.  The  successors  of  Julian  were 
enemies  of  the  apostate.  They  speedily  restored  their 
fellow-believers  to  the  supremacy  they  had  lost.  A 
ferocious  hymn  of  exultation  by  Gregory  of  Nazianzen 
was  chanted  far  and  wide.  Cries  of  joy  and  execration 
resounded  in  market-places,  and  churches,  and  theatres. 
The  market-places  had  been  closed  against  the  Chri^ 


GOTHS.  W 

nans,  their  churches  had  been  interdicted,  and  the 
theatres  shut  up,  by  the  overstrained  asceticism  of  the 
deceased.  It  was  perceived  that  Christianity  had  taken 
deeper  root  than  the  apostate  had  believed,  and  hence- 
forth no  effort  could  bo  made  to  revivify  the  old  super- 
stition. After  a  nominal  election  of  Jovian,  the  choice 
cf  the  soldiers  fell  on  two  of  their  favourite  leaders, 
Valentinian  and  Valens,  brothers,  and  sufferers  in  the 
late  persecutions  for  their  faith.  Named  emperors  of 
the  Roman  world,  they  came  to  an  amicable  division  of 
the  empire  into  East  and  West.  Yalens  remained  in 
Constantinople  to  guard  the  frontiers  of  the  Danube  and 
the  Euphrates;  while  Valentinian,  who  saw  great  clouds 
darkening  over  Italy  and  Gaul,  fixed  his  imperial  resi- 
dence in  the  strQng  city  of  Milan.  The  separation  took 
place  in  364,  and  henceforth  the  stream  of  history 
flows  in  two  distinct  and  gradually  diverging  channels. 
This  century  has  already  been  marked  by  the  removal 
of  the  seat  of  power  to  Constantinople;  by  the  attempt 
at  the  restoration  of  Paganism  by  Julian ;  and  we  have 
now  to  dwell  for  a  little  on  the  third  and  greatest  in- 
cident of  all,  the  invasion  of  the  Goths,  and  final  scttlo- 
ment  of  hostile  warriors  on  the  Roman  soil. 

Names  that  have  retained  their  sound  and  established 
themselves  as  household  words  in  Europe  now  meet  us 
at  every  turn.  Yalentinian  is  engaged  in  resisting  the 
Saxons.  The  Britons,  the  Scots,  the  Germans,  are 
pushing  their  claims  to  independence ;  and  in  the  farther 
East,  the  persecutions  and  tyranny  of  the  contemptible 
Valens  are  suddenly  suspended  by  the  news  that  a  people 
hitherto  unheard  of  had  made  their  appearance  within 
an  easy  march  of  the  boundary,  and  that  universal  terror 
had  taken  possession  of  the  soldiers  of  the  empire.  Who 
were  those  soldiers  ?  We  have  seen  for  many  years  that 
khe  policy  of  the  emperors  had  been  to  introduce  the  bar- 
5 


^^  FOUETn   CENTURY. 

barians  into  the  military  service  of  the  State,  and  to 
expose  the  wasted  and  helpless  inhabitants  to  the  ra- 
pacity of  their  tax-gatherers.  This  system  had  been 
carried  to  such  a  pitch,  that  it  is  probable  there  were 
none  but  mercenaries  of  the  most  varying  interests  in 
the  Eoman  ranks.  Yet  such  is  the  effect  of  discipline, 
and  the  pride  of  military  combination,  that  all  other 
faelings  gave  way  before  it.  The  Gothic  chief,  now  in- 
vested with  command  in  the  Eoman  armies,  turned  his 
arms  against  his  countrymen.  The  Albanian,  the  Saxon, 
the  Briton,  elevated  to  the  rank  of  duke  or  count,  looked 
back  on  Marius  and  Csesar  as  their  lineal  predecessors 
in  opposing  and  conquering  the  enemies  of  Eome.  The 
names  of  the  generals  and  magistrates,  accordingly, 
which  we  encounter  after  this  date,  have  a  strangely 
barbaric  sound.  There  are  Ricimer,  and  Marcomir,  and 
Arbogast — and  finally,  the  name  which  overtopped  and 
outlived  them  all,  the  name  of  Alaric  the  Goth.  Now, 
the  Goths,  we  have  seen,  had  been  settled  for  many 
generations  on  the  northern  side  of  the  Danube.  Much 
intercourse  must  have  taken  place  between  the  in- 
habitants of  the  two  banks.  There  must  have  been 
trade,  and  love,  and  quarrellings,  and  rejoicings.  At 
shorter  and  shorter  intervals  the  bravest  of  the  tribes 
must  have  passed  over  into  the  Roman  territory  and 
joined  the  Legions.  Occasionally  a  timid  or  despotic 
emperor  would  suddenly  order  his  armies  across,  and 
carry  fire  and  sword  into  the  unsuspecting  country. 
But  on  the  whole,  the  terms  on  which  they  lived  were 
not  hostile,  for  the  ties  which  united  the  two  peoples 
were  numerous  and  strong.  Even  the  languages  in  the 
course  of  time  must  have  come  to  be  mutually  intelligi- 
ble, and  we  read  of  Gothic  leaders  who  were  excellent 
judges  of  Homer  and  seldom  travelled  without  a  few 
ebosen  books.     This  being  the  case,  what  was  the  con- 


BUNS.  99 

sternation  of  the  almost  civilized  Goths  in  tho  fertile 
levels  of  the  present  Wallachia  and  Moldavia  to  heai 
that  an  innumerable  horde  of  dreadful  savages,  calling 
themselves  Huns  and  Magyars,  had  appeared  on  tho 
western  shore  of  the  Black  Sea,  and  spread  over  tho 
land,  destroying,  murdering,  burning  whatever  lay  io 
their  way !  Cooped  up  for  an  unknown  period,  it  ap- 
peared, on  the  northeastern  side  of  the  Palus  Moeotis,now 
better  known  to  ns  as  the  Sea  of  Azof— living  on  fish 
out  of  the  Don,  and  on  the  cattle  of  the  long  steppes 
which  extend  across  the  Volga,  these  sons  of  the  Scy- 
thiun  desert  had  never  been  heard  of  either  by  the 
Sotha  or  Eomans.  A  hideous  people  to  behold,  as  tho 
aervertcd  imagination  of  poet  or  painter  could  produce. 
They  wore  low  in  stature,  but  broad-shouldered  and 
dtrong.  Their  wide  cheek-bones  and  small  eyes  gave 
them  a  savage  and  cruel  expression,  which  was  increased 
by  their  want  of  nose,  for  the  only  visible  appearance 
of  that  indispensable  organ  consisted  of  two  holes  sunk 
into  the  square  expanse  of  their  faces.  Fear  is  not  a 
flattering  painter,  but  from  these  rude  descriptions  it  is 
easy  to  recognise  the  Calmuck  countenance;  and  when 
we  add  their  small  horses,  long  spears,  and  prodigious 
lightness  and  activity,  we  shall  see  a  very  close  re- 
semblance between  them  and  their  successors  in  the 
same  district,  the  Eussian  Cossacks  iif  the  Bon.  On,  on, 
came  the  torrent  of  these  pitiless,  fearless,  ugly,  dirty, 
irresistible  foes.  The  Goths,  terrified  at  their  aspect, 
and  bewildered  with  the  accounts  they  heard  of  their 
numbers  and  mode  of  warfare,  petitioned  tho  emperor 
to  give  them  an  asylum  on  the  lioman  side.  Their 
prayer  was  granted  on  condition  of  depositing  their 
children  and  arms  in  Roman  hands.  They  had  no  time 
to  squabble  about  terms.  Every  thing  was  agreed  to. 
Boats  manned  by  Roman  soldiers  were  busy  day  and 


iOO  FOURTH   CENTURY. 

Dight  in  transporting  the  Gothic  exiles  to  the  Eoman 
Bide.  Arms  and  jewels,  and  wives  and  children,  the 
furniture  of  their  tents,  and  idols  of  their  gods,  all  got 
safely  across  the  guarding  river.  The  Huns,  the  Alans, 
and  the  other  unsightly  hordes  who  had  gathered  in  the 
pursuit,  came  down  to  the  bank,  and  shouted  useless 
defiance  and  threats  of  vengeance.  The  broad  Danube 
rolled  between;  and  there  rested  that  night  on  the 
Roman  soil  a  whole  nation,  different  in  interest,  in 
manners  and  religion,  from  the  population  they  had 
joined,  numbering  upwards  of  a  million  souls,  bound 
together  by  every  thing  that  constitutes  the  unity  of  a 
people.  The  avarice  and  injustice  of  the  Roman  author- 
ities negatived  the  clause  of  the  agreement  that  stipu- 
lated for  the  surrender  of  the  Gothic  arms.  To  redeem 
their  swords  and  spears,  they  parted  with  the  silver  and 
gold  they  had  amassed  in  their  predatory  incursions  on 
the  Roman  territory.  They  knew  that  once  in  posses- 
sion of  their  weapons  they  could  soon  reclaim  all  they 
gave — and  in  no  long  time  the  attempt  was  made.  Fri- 
tigern,  the  leader  of  their  name,  led  them  against  the 
armies  of  Rome.  Insulted  at  their  audacity,  the  Em- 
peror Yalens,  at  the  head  of  three  hundred  thousand 
men,  met  them  in  the  plain  of  Adrianople.  The  exist- 
ence  of  the  Gothic  people  was  at  stake.  They 
fought  with  desperation  and  hatred.  The  em- 
peror was  defeated,  leaving  two-thirds  of  his  army  on 
the  field  of  battle.  Seeking  safety  in  a  cottage  at  the 
side  of  the  road,  he  was  burned  by  the  inexorable  pur- 
suers, who,  gathering  up  their  broken  lines,  marched 
steadily  through  the  intervening  levels  and  gazed  with 
enraptured  eyes  on  the  glittering  towers  and  pinnacles 
of  Constantinople  itself.  But  the  walls  were  high  and 
strongly  armed.  The  barbarians  were  inveigled  into  a 
negotiation,  and  mastered  by  the  unequal  powers  of  lying,, 


HUNS.  lOJ 

at  all  times  characteristic  of  the  Greeks.  Fritigern  con- 
sented to  withdraw  his  troops :  some  were  embodied  in 
the  levies  of  the  empire,  and  others  dispersed  in  different 
provinces.  Those  settled  in  Thrace  were  faithful  to  their 
employers,  and  resisted  their  ancient  enemies  the  Huns; 
but  the  great  body  of  the  discontented  conquerors  were 
ready  for  fresh  assaults  on  the  Eoman  land.  Theodo- 
Bius,  called  to  the  throne  in  379,  succeeded  in  staving 
off  the  evil  day;  but  when  the  final  partition  of  the 
empire  took  place  between  his  two  sons — Honorius  and 
Arcadius — there  was  nothing  to  oppose  the 
terrible  onset  of  the  Goths.  At  their  head  was 
Alaric,  the  descendant  of  their  original  chiefs,  and  him- 
self the  bravest  of  his  wan-iors.  He  broke  into  Greece, 
forcing  his  way  through  Thermopyla),  and  devastated 
the  native  seats  of  poetry  and  the  arts  with  fire  and 
sword.  The  ruler  at  Constantinople  heard  of  his  ad- 
vance with  terror,  and  opposed  to  him  the  Yandal  Stili- 
cho,  the  greatest  of  his  generals.  But  the  wily  Alaric 
declined  to  fight,  and  out-manceuvred  his  enemies,  es- 
caping to  the  sure  fastnesses  of  Epirus,  and  sat  down 
sullen  and  discontented,  meditating  further  expeditions 
into  richer  plains,  and  already  seeing  before  him  the 
prostrate  cities  of  Italy.  The  terror  of  Arcadius  tried 
in  vain  to  soften  his  rage,  or  satisfy  his  ambition  with 
vain  titles,  among  others,  that  of  Count  of  the  Illyrian 
Border.  The  spirit  of  aggression  was  fairly  roused.  All 
the  Gothic  settlers  in  the  Eoman  territory  were  ready  to 
join  their  countrymen  in  one  great  and  combined  attack; 
— and  with  this  position  of  the  personages  of  the  drama, 
the  curtain  falls  on  the  fourth  century,  while  prepara- 
tions for  the  great  catastrophe  are  going  on. 


FIFTH  CENTURY 


iSmperors. 


A.D.  West. 

HoNORius — {cont.) 
424.  Valentinian  III. 
455.  Petronius  Maximus. 
455.  AviTUS. 
457.  Majorianus. 
461.  Seterus. 
467.  Anthemius. 

472.  Olibius. 

473.  Glycerius. 

474.  Julius  Nepos. 

475.  A.UGUSTULUS  Romulus. 


A.D.  East, 

Arcadius — {cchL) 
408.  Theodosius  II, 
450.  Marcian. 
457.  Leo  the  Great. 
474.  Zeno. 
491.  Anastasius. 


King  of  tf)e  dFtanfes. 

481.  Clovis. 


Mm  Of  italg, 

489.  Theodoric. 


Gutters. 

Chr/303tom,  Jerome,  Augustine,  Pelagius,  (405,)  Sidonius 
AroLL^NARis,  Patricius,  Macrobius,  Vicentius  of  Lerins,  (died 
<50,)  Ctril,  Bishop  of  Alexandria,  (412-444.) 


THE  FIFTH  CENTURY. 

IND     OF     THE     ROMAN     EMPIRE — FORMATION     OF     MODERBI 
STATES GROWTH   OF   ECCLESIASTICAL  AUTHORITY. 

"We  find  the  same  actors  on  the  stage  when  the  cur- 
tain  rises  again,  but  circumstances  have  greatly  changed. 
After  his  escape  from  Stilicho,  Alaric  had  been  "  lifted 
on  the  shield,"  the  wild  and  picturesque  way  in  which 
the  warlike  Goths  nominated  their  kings,  and  henceforth 
was  considered  the  monarch  of  a  separate  and  inde- 
pendent people,  no  longer  the  mere  leader  of  a  band  of 
predatory  barbarians.  In  this  new  character  he  entered 
into  treaties  with  the  emperors  of  Constantinople  or 
Kome,  and  broke  them,  as  if  he  had  already  been  the 
sovereign  of  a  civilized  state. 

In  403  he  broke  up  from  his  secure  retreat  on  the 
Adriatic,  and  burst  into  Italy,  spreading  fire  and  famine 
wherever  he  w^ent.  Honorius,  the  Emperor  of  the  West, 
fled  from  Milan,  and  was  besieged  in  Asti  by  the  Goths. 
Here  would  have  ended  the  imperial  dynasty,  some 
years  before  its  time,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  watchful 
Stilicho.  This  Yandal  chief  flew  to  the  rescue  of  Hono- 
rius, repulsed  Alaric  with  great  slaughter,  and  delivered 
his  master  from  his  dangerous  position.  The  grateful 
emperor  entered  Eome  in  triumph,  and  for  the  last  time 
the  Circus  streamed  with  the  blood  of  beasts  and  men. 
He  retired  after  this  display  to  the  inaccessible  marshes 
3f  Eavenna,  at  the  mouths  of  the  Po,  and,  secure  in 
vhat  fortress,  sent  an  order  to  have  his  preserver  and 

105 


100  FIFTH   CENTURY. 

benefactor  murdered ;  Stiliclio,  the  only  liope  of 
Eome,  was  assassinated,  and  Alaric  once  more 
saw  all  Italy  within  his  grasp.  It  was  not  only  the 
Goths  who  followed  Alaric's  command.  All  the  bar- 
barianS;  of  whatever  name  or  race,  who  had  been  trans- 
planted either  as  slaves  or  soldiers — Alans,  Franks,  an<' 
Germans — ^rallied  round  the  advancing  king,  for  the  im- 
politic Honorius  had  issued  an  order  for  the  extermina- 
tion of  all  the  tribes.  There  were  Britons,  and  Saxons, 
and  Suabians.  It  was  an  insurrection  of  all  the  manly 
elements  of  society  against  the  indescribable  deprava- 
tion of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Peninsula.  The  wildest 
barbarian  blushed  in  the  midst  of  his  ignorance  and 
rudeness  to  hear  of  the  manners  of  the  highest  and 
most  distinguished  families  in  Eome.  Nobody  could 
hold  out  a  hand  to  avert  the  judgment  that  was  about 
to  fall  on  the  devoted  city.  Ambassadors  indeed  ap- 
peared, and  bought  a  short  delay  at  the  price  of  many 
thousand  pounds'  weight  of  gold  and  silver,  and  of  large 
quantities  of  silk  j  but  these  were  only  additional  incite- 
ments to  the  cupidity  of  the  invader.  Tribe  after  tribe 
rose  up  with  fresh  fury;  warriors  of  every  hue  and 
shape,  and  with  every  manner  of  equipment.  The 
handsome  Goth  in  his  iron  cuirass ;  the  Alan  with  his 
saddle  covered  with  human  skin ;  the  German  making  a 
hideous  sound  by  shrieking  on  the  sharp  edge  of  his 
shield ;  and  the  countryman  of  Alaric  himself  sounding 
the  "horn  of  battle,"  which  terrified  the  Eomans  with 
its  ominous  note — all  started  forward  on  the  march.  At 
the  head  of  each  detachment  rode  a  band,  singing  songs 
of  exultation  and  defiance;  and  the  Eomans,  stupefied 
with  fear,  saw  these  innumerable  swarms  defile  towards 
the  ALilvian  bridge  and  close  up  every  access  to  the 
town.  There  was  no  corn  from  Sicily  or  Africa ;  a  pest 
raged  in  every  house,  and  hunger  reduced  the  inhabit- 


FALL   OF   ROME.  107 

inls  to  despah*.  The  gates  were  thrown  open,  and  all 
the  pent-up  animosity  of  the  desert  was  poured  out  upon 
the  mistress  and  corrupter  of  the  world.  For  six  days 
the  city  was  given  up  to  remorseless  slaughter  and  uni- 
versal pillage.  The  wealth  was  incalculable.  The  cap- 
tives were  sold  as  slaves.  The  palaces  were  overthrown, 
and  the  river  choked  with  carcasses  and  the  treasures 
of  art  which  the  barbarians  could  not  appreciate.  "  The 
new  Babylon,"  cries  Bossuet,  the  great  Bishop  of  Meaux, 
"  rival  of  the  old,  swelled  out  like  her  with  her  successes, 
and,  triumphing  in  her  pleasures  and  riches,  encountered 
as  great  a  fall."    And  no  man  lamented  her  fate. 

Alaric,  who  had  thus  achieved  a  victory  denied  to 
Hannibal  and  Pyrrhus,  resolved  to  push  his  con- 
quests to  the  end  of  Italy.  But  on  his  march 
towards  the  Straits  of  Sicily,  illness  overtook  him.  His 
life  had  been  unlike  that  of  other  men,  and  his  burial 
was  to  excite  the  wonder  of  the  Bruttians,  among 
whom  he  died.  A  large  river  was  turned  from  its 
course,  and  in  its  channel  a  deep  grave  was  dug  and 
ornamented  with  monumental  stone.  To  this  the  body 
of  the  barbaric  king  was  carried,  clothed  in  full  armour, 
and  accompanied  with  some  of  the  richest  spoils  of 
Eome ;  and  then  the  stream  was  turned  on  again ,  the 
prisoners  who  had  executed  the  works  were  slaughtered 
to  conceal  the  secret  of  the  tomb,  and  nobody  has  ever 
found  out  where  the  Gothic  king  reposes.  But  while 
the  Busentino  flowed  peaceably  on,  and  guarded  the 
body  of  the  conqueror  from  the  revenge  of  the  Romans, 
new  perils  were  gathering  round  the  throne  of  the 
Western  emperor.  As  if  the  duration  of  the  empire  had 
been  inseparably  connected  with  the  capital,  the  reve- 
rence of  mankind  was  never  bestowed  on  Milan  or  Ea- 
venna,  in  which  the  court  was  now  established,  as  it 
bad  been  upon  Rome.    Britain  had  already  thrown  off 


£08 


FIFTH   CENTURY. 


the  distant  yoke,  and  submitted  to  the  Saxon  invaders 
Spain  had  also  peaceably  accepted  the  rule  of  the  three 
kindred  tribes  of  Sueves  and  Alans  and  Yandals.  Gaul 
itself  had  given  its  adhesion  to  the  Burgundians  (who 
fixed  their  seat  in  the  district  which  still  bears  their 
name)  and  offered  a  feeble  resistance  to  any  fresh  in- 
vader.  Ataulf,  the  brother  of  Alaric,  came  to  the  res- 
cue of  the  empire,  and  of  course  completed  the  destruc- 
tion. He  married  the  sister  of  Honorius,  and  retained 
her  as  a  hostage  of  the  emperor's  good  faith.  He  pro- 
mised to  restore  the  revolted  provinces  to  their  former 
master,  and  succeeded  in  overthrowing  some  competitors 
who  had  started  up  to  dispute  with  Ravenna  the  wreck? 
of  former  power.  He  then  forced  his  way  into  Spain; 
and  the  hopes  of  the  degenerate  Eomans  were  high. 
But  murder,  as  usual,  stopped  the  career  of  Ataulf,  and 
all  was  changed.  The  emperor  ratified  the  possessions 
,,,   which   he   could  not   dispute,  and  in  the  first 

A.D.  415.  o       1   • 

twenty  years  of  this  century  three  separate 
kingdoms  were  established  in  Europe.  This  was  soon 
followed  by  a  Yandal  conquest  of  the  shores  of  Africa, 
which  raised  Carthage  once  more  to  commercial  import- 
ance, united  Sicily,  Corsica,  and  Sardinia  to  the  new- 
founded  state,  and  by  the  creation  of  a  fleet  gained  the 
command  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea,  and  threatenec? 
Constantinople  itself. 

With  so  many  provinces  not  only  torn  from  the 
empire,  but  erected  into  hostile  kingdoms,  nothing  was 
wanting  but  some  new  irruption  into  the  still  dependent 
territories  to  put  a  final  end  to  the  Eoman  name.  And 
a  new  incursion  came.  In  the  very  involved  relations 
existing  between  the  emperors  of  the  East  and  West,  it 
is  diflacult  to  follow  the  course  of  events  witn  any  clear- 
ness. While  the  deluded  populace  of  Constantinople 
veere  rejoicing  in  the  fall  of  their  Italian  rival,  they 


ATTILA.  *09 

heard  with  amazement,  in  441,  that  a  savage  potentate, 
who  had  pitched  his  tents  in  the  plains  of  Pannonia  and 
Thrace,  and  kept  round  him,  for  defence  or  conquest, 
eeven  hundred  thousand  of  those  hideous-featured  Huns 
who  had  spread  devastation  and  terror  all  over  the 
populations  of  Asia,  from  the  borders  of  China  to  the 
Don,  had  determined  on  stretching  his  conquests  over 
the  whole  world,  and  merely  hesitated  with  which  of 
the  doomed  empires  to  begin  his  career.  His  name  was 
Attila,  or,  according  to  its  native  pronunciation,  Etzel ; 
and  it  soon  resounded,  louder  and  more  temfying  than 
that  of  Alaric  the  Goth.  The  Emperor  of  the  East  sent 
an  embassy  to  this  dreadful  neighbour,  a  minute  account 
of  which  remains,  and  from  which  we  learn  the  barbaric 
pomp  and  ceremony  of  the  leader  of  the  Huns,  and  the 
perfidy  and  debasement  of  the  Greeks.  An  attempt 
was  made  to  poison  the  redoubtable  chief,  and  he  com- 
plained of  the  guilty  ambassador  to  the  very  person 
who  had  given  him  his  instructions  for  the  deed.  Un- 
satisfied with  the  result,  the  Hunnish  monarch  advanced 
his  camp.  Constantinople,  anxious  to  ward  off  the  blow 
from  itself,  descanted  to  the  savage  king  on  the  exposed 
condition  and  ill-defended  wealth  of  the  Italian  towns. 
Treachery  of  another  kind  came  to  his  aid.  An  offended 
sister  of  the  emperor  sent  to  Attila  her  ring  as  a  mark 
of  espousal,  and  be  now  claimed  a  portion  of  the  empire 
as  the  dowry  of  his  bride.  When  this  was  refused,  he 
reiterated  his  old  claim  of  satisfaction  for  the  attempt 
upon  his  life,  and  ravaged  the  fields  of  Belgium  and 
Gaul,  in  the  double  character  of  avenger  of  an  insult 
and  claimant  of  an  inheritance.  It  does  not  much 
matter  under  what  plea  a  barbarous  chieftain,  with  six 
hundred  thousand  warriors,  makes  a  demand.  It  must 
be  answered  sword  in  hand,  or  on  the  knees.  The 
aiewly-established    Prankish     and     Burgundian    kings 


110  FIFTH    CENTURY. 

gathered  their  forces  in  defence  of  their  Christian  faith 
and  their  recently-acquired  dominions.  Attila  retired 
from  Orleans,  of  which  ho  had  commenced  the  8iege> 
and  chose  for  the  battle-field,  which  was  to  decide  the 
destiny  of  the  world,  a  vast  plain  not  far  from  Chalons, 
on  the  Marne,  where  his  cavalry  would  have  room  to 
act,  and  waited  the  assault  of  all  the  forces  that  France 
and  Italy  could  collect.  The  Visigoths  prepared  for  the 
decisive  engagement  under  their  king,  Theodoric;  the 
Franks  of  the  Saal  under  Meroveg;  the  Ripuarian 
Franks,  the  Saxons,  and  the  Burgundians  were 
'  under  leaders  of  their  own.  It  was  a  fight  in 
which  were  brought  face  to  face  the  two  conquering 
races  of  the  world,  and  upon  its  result  it  depended 
whether  Europe  was  to  be  ruled  by  a  dynasty  of  Cal- 
mucks  or  left  to  her  free  progress  under  her  Gothic  and 
Teutonic  kings.  Three  hundred  thousand  corpses 
marked  the  severity  of  the  struggle,  but  victory  rested 
with  the  West.  Attila  retreated  from  Gaul,  and  wreaked 
his  vengeance  on  the  Italian  cities.  He  destroyed  Aqui- 
leia,  whose  terrified  inhabitants  hid  themselves  in  the 
marshes  and  lagoons  which  afterwards  bore  the  palaces 
of  Venice ;  Vicenza,  Padua,  and  Verona  were  spoiled 
and  burned.  Pavia  and  Milan  submitted  without  re- 
sistance. On  approaching  Eome,  the  venerable  bishop, 
Saint  Leo,  met  the  devastating  Hun,  and  by  the  gravity 
of  his  appearance,  the  ransom  he  offered,  and  perhaps 
the  mystic  dignity  which  still  rested  upon  the  city  whose 
cause  he  pleaded,  prevailed  on  him  to  retire.  Shortly 
after,  the  chief  of  this  brief  and  terrible  visitation  died 
in  his  tent  on  the  banks  of  the  Danube,  and  left  no 
lasting  memorial  of  his  irruption  except  the  depopula- 
tion his  cruelty  had  caused,  and  the  ruin  he  had  spread 
^vcr  some  of  the  fairest  regions  of  the  earth. 
But  Rome,  spared  by  the  influence  of  the  bishop  from 


THE   VANDALS.  Ill 

che  ravage  of  the  Hun8,  could  not  escape  the  destroying 
enmity  of  O'^nseric  and  the  Yandals.  Dashing  across 
from  Africa,  these  furious  conquerors  destroyed  for  de- 
struction's sake,  and  affixed  the  name  of  Vandalism  on 
whatever  is  harsh  and  unrefined.  For  fourteen  days  the 
spoilers  were  at  work  in  Kome,  and  it  is  only  wonderful 
that  after  so  many  plunderings  any  thing  worth  plunder- 
ing remained.  "When  the  sated  Vandals  crossed  to  Car- 
thage again,  the  Gothic  and  Suevic  kings  gave  the 
purple  to  whatever  puppet  they  chose.  Afraid  still  to  in- 
vest themselves  with  the  insignia  of  the  Imperial  power, 
they  bestowed  them  or  took  them  away,  and  at  last 
rendered  the  throne  and  the  crown  so  contemptible, 
that  when  Odoacer  was  proclaimed  King  of  Italy,  the 
phantom  assembly  which  still  called  itself  the  Eoman 
Senate  sent  back  to  Constantinople  the  tiara  and  purple 
robe,  in  sign  that  the  AVestcrn  Empire  had  passed  away. 
Zeno,  the  Eastern  ruler,  retained  the  ornaments  of  the 
departed  sovereignty,  and  sent  to  the  Ilerulean  Odoacer 
the  title  of  "  Patrician,"  sole  emblem  left  of  the  greatness 
and  antiquity  of  the  Eoman  name.  It  may  be  interest- 
ing to  remember  that  the  last  who  wore  the  Imperial 
crown  was  a  youth  who  would  probably  have  escaped 
the  recognition  of  posterity  altogether,  if  he  had  not, 
by  a  sort  of  cruel  mockery  of  his  misfortunes,  borne 
the  names  of  Romulus  Augustulus — the  former  recalling 
the  great  founder  of  the  city,  and  the  latter  the  first  of 
the  Imperial  line. 

Thus,  then,  in  476,  Rome  came  to  her  deserved  and 
terrible  end;  and  before  we  trace  the  influence  of  this 
great  event  upon  the  succeeding  centuries,  it  will  be 
worth  while  to  devote  a  few  words  to  the  cause  of  its 
overthrow.  These  were  evidently  three — the  ineradi- 
{»ble  barbarity  and  selfishness  of  the  Roman  character, 
the  depravation  of  manners  in  the  capital,  and  the  want 


^i2  FIFTH   CENTURY. 

of  some  combining  influence  to  bind  all  the  parts  of  tli« 
various  empire  into  a  whole.  From  the  earliest  inci 
dents  in  the  history  of  Eome,  wo  gather  that  she  was 
utterly  regardless  of  human  life  or  suffering.  Her  treat- 
ment of  her  vanquished  enemies,  and  her  laws  upon 
parental  authority,  upon  slaves  and  debtors,  show  the 
pitiless  disposition  of  her  people.  Look  at  her  citizen? 
at  any  period  of  her  career — her  populace  or  her  con 
suls — in  the  field  of  battle  or  in  the  forum,  you  will 
always  find  them  the  true  descendants  of  those  blood- 
stained refugees,  who  established  their  den  of  robbers 
on  the  seven  hills,  and  pretended  they  were  led  by  a 
man  who  had  been  suckled  by  a  wolf  While  conquest 
was  their  object,  this  sanguinary  disposition  enabled 
them  to  perform  great  exploits ;  but  when  victory  had 
secured  to  them  the  blessings  of  peace  and  safety,  the 
same  thirst  for  excitement  continued.  They  cried  out 
for  blood  in  the  amphitheatre,  and  had  no  pleasure  in 
any  display  which  was  not  accompanied  with  pain.  The 
rival  chief  who  had  perilled  their  supremacy  in  the  field 
was  led  in  ferocious  triumph  at  the  wheel  of  his  con- 
queror, and  beheaded  or  flogged  to  death  at  the  gate  of 
the  Capitol.  The  wounded  gladiator  looked  round  the 
benches  of  the  arena  in  hopes  of  seeing  the  thumbs  of 
the  spectators  turned  down — the  signal  for  his  life  being 
spared ;  but  matrons  and  maids,  the  high  and  the  low, 
looked  with  unmoved  faces  upon  his  agonies,  and  gave 
the  signal  for  his  death  without  remorse.  They  were 
the  same  people,  even  in  their  amusements,  who  gave 
order  for  the  destruction  of  IS'umantium  and  Carthage. 
But  cruelty  was  not  enough.  They  sank  into  the 
wildest  vices  of  sensuality,  and  lost  the  dignity  of  man- 
hood, and  the  last  feelings  of  self-respect.  Never  was  a 
nation  so  easily  habituated  to  slavery.  They  licked  the 
hand  that  struck  them  hardest.     They  hung  garlands 


HARSHNESS   OF   THE   ROMANS.  US 

for  a  long  time  on  the  tomb  of  I^qto.  They  insisted  on 
being  revenged  on  the  murderers  of  Commodus,  and 
frequently  slew  more  citizens  in  broils  in  the  street  and 
quarrels  in  the  theatre,  than  had  fought  at  Cannse  oi 
Zama.  It  might  have  been  hoped  that  the  cruelty 
which  characterized  the  days  of  their  military  aggres- 
sion would  be  softened  down  when  they  had  become 
the  acknowledged  rulers  of  the  world.  Luxury  itself, 
it  might  be  thought,  would  be  inconsistent  with  the 
sight  of  blood.  But  in  this  utterly  detestable  race  the 
two  extremes  of  human  society  seemed  to  have  the 
same  result.  The  brutal,  half-clothed  savage  of  an  early 
age  conveyed  his  tastes  as  well  as  his  conquests  to  the 
enervated  voluptuary  of  the  empire.  The  virtues,  such 
as  they  were,  of  that  former  period — contempt  of  dan- 
ger, unfaltering  resolution,  and  a  certain  simplicity  of 
life — had  departed,  and  all  the  bad  features  were  exagge- 
rated. Eeligion  also  had  disappeared.  Even  a  false 
religion,  if  sincerely  entertained,  is  a  bond  of  union 
among  all  who  profess  its  faith.  But  between  Eome 
and  its  colonies,  and  between  man  and  man,  there  was 
soon  no  community  of  belief.  The  sweltering  wretches 
in  the  Forum  sneered  at  the  existence  of  Bacchus  in 
the  midst  of  his  mysteries,  and  imitated  the  actions  of 
their  gods,  while  they  laughed  at  the  hypocrisy  of 
priests  and  augurs,  who  treated  them  as  divine.  A 
cruel,  depraved,  godless  people — these  were  the  Eomane 
who  had  enslaved  the  world  with  their  arms  and  cor- 
rupted it  with  their  civilization.  When  their  capita] 
fell,  men  felt  relieved  from  a  burden  and  shame.  The 
lessons  of  Christianity  had  been  thrown  away  on  a 
population  too  gross  and  too  truculent  to  receive  them. 
Some  of  gentler  mould  than  others  had  received  the 
Saviour;  but  to  the  mass  of  Eomans  the  language  of 
peace  and  justice,  of  forgiveness  and  brotherhood,  was 


11^  FIFTH   CENTURY. 

unknown.  It  was  to  be  the  wortliier  recipients  of  a 
pure  and  elevating  faith,  that  the  Goth  was  called  from 
his  wilderness  and  the  German  from  his  forest. 

But  the  faith  jiad  to  be  purified  itself  before  it  was 
fitted  for  the  reception  of  the  new  conquerors  of  the 
world.  The  dissensions  of  the  Christian  Churches  had 
added  only  a  fresh  element  of  weakness  to  the  empire 
of  Kome.  There  were  heretics  everywhere,  supporting 
their  opinions  with  bigotry  and  violence — Arians,  Sabel- 
lians,  Montanists,  and  fifty  names  besides.  Torn  by 
these  parties,  dishonoured  by  pretended  conversions,  the 
result  of  flattery  and  ambition,  the  Christian  Church 
was  farther  weakened  by  the  effect  of  wealth  and 
luxury  upon  its  chiefs.  While  contending  with  rival 
sects  upon  some  point  of  discipline  or  doctrine,  they 
made  themselves  so  notorious  for  the  desire  of  riches, 
and  the  infamous  arts  they  practised  to  get  themselves 
appointed  heirs  of  the  rich  members  of  their  congrega- 
tions, that  a  law  was  passed  making  a  conveyance  in 
favour  of  a  priest  invalid.  And  it  is  not  from  Pagan 
enemies  or  heretical  rivals  we  learn  this — it  is  from  the 
letters  still  extant  of  the  most  honoured  Fathers  of  the 
Church.  One  of  them  tells  us  that  the  Prefect  Pre- 
textatus,  alluding  to  the  luxury  of  the  Pontiffs,  and  to 
the  magnificence  of  their  apparel,  said  to  Pope  Damasus, 
"Make  me  Bishop  of  Kome,  and  I  will  turn  Christian." 
"Far,  then,"  says  a  Eoman  Catholic  historian  of  our 
own  day,  "from  strengthening  the  Eoman  world  with 
its  virtues,  the  Christian  society  seemed  to  have  adopted 
the  vices  it  was  its  office  to  overcome."  But  the  fall  of 
Eoman  power  was  the  resurrection  of  Christianity.  It 
had  a  Eesurrection,  because  it  had  had  a  Death,  and  a 
new  world  was  now  prepared  for  its  reception.  Its 
everlasting  truths,  indeed,  had  been  full  of  life  and 
Vigour  all  through  the  sad  period  of  Eoman  deprava- 


MONKS. 


115 


tiou,  but  the  ground  was  unfitted  for  their  growth ;  and 
the  gi'cat  characteristic  of  this  century  is  not  the  con- 
quest of  Eome  by  Alaric  the  Goth,  or  the  dreadful 
assault  on  Europe  by  Attila  the  Hun,  or  the  final  aboli- 
tion of  the  old  capital  of  the  world  by  Odoacer  the 
Herulean,  but  rather  the  ecclesiastical  chaos  which 
spread  over  the  earth.  The  age  of  martyrs  had  passed 
— ^the  philosophers  had  begun  their  pestiferous  tamper- 
ings  with  the  facts  of  revelation — and  over  all  rioted 
and  stormed  an  ambitious  and  worldly  priesthood,  who 
hated  their  opponents  with  more  bitterness  than  the 
heathens  had  displayed  against  the  Christians,  and  ran 
wild  in  every  species  of  lawlessness  and  vice.  The 
deserts  and  caves  which  used  to  give  retreat  to  medita- 
tive worshippers  or  timid  believers,  now  teemed  with 
thousands  of  furious  and  fanatical  monks,  who  rushed 
occasionally  into  the  great  cities  of  the  empire,  and  filled 
their  streets  with  blood  and  rapine.  Guided  by  no  less 
fanatical  bishops,  they  spread  murder  and  terror  over 
whole  provinces.  Alexandria  stood  in  more  fear  of 
these  professed  recluses  than  of  an  army  of  hostile 
soldiers.  "There  is  a  race,"  says  Eunapius,  "called 
monks — ^men  indeed  in  form,  but  hogs  in  life,  who  prac- 
tise and  allow  abominable  things.  Whoever  wears  a 
black  robe,  and  is  not  ashamed  of  filthy  garments,  and 
presents  a  dirty  face  to  the  public  view,  obtains  a  tyran- 
nical authority."  False  miracles,  absurd  prophecies, 
and  ludicrous  visions  were  the  instruments  with  which 
these  and  other  impostors  established  their  power.  Mad 
enthusiasts  imprisoned  themselves  in  dungeons,  or  ex- 
posed themselves  on  the  tops  of  pillars,  naked,  except 
by  the  growth  of  their  tangled  hair,  and  the  coating  of 
filth  upon  their  persons, — and  gained  credit  among  the 
Ignorant  for  self-denial  and  abnegation  of  the  world. 
All  the  high   offices  of  the   Church  were   so   iucra- 


116 


FIFTH   CENTURY. 


tive   and  honourable  as  to  be  the   object  of  universal 
desire. 

To  be  established  archbishop  of  a  diocese  cost  more 
lives  than  the  conquest  of  a  province.  "When  the  Chris- 
tian community  needed  support  from  without,  they  had 
recourse  to  some  rich  or  powerful  individual,  some 
general  of  an  army,  or  governor  of  a  district,  and  begged 
him  to  assume  the  pastoral  staff  in  exchange  for  his 
military  sword.  Sometimes  the  assembled  crowd  cried 
out  the  name  of  a  favourite  who  was  not  even  known 
to  be  a  Christian,  and  the  mitre  was  conveyed  by  accla- 
mation to  a  person  who  had  to  undergo  the  ceremonies 
of  baptism  and  ordination  before  he  could  place  it  on 
his  head.  Sometimes  the  exigencies  of  the  congrega- 
tion required  a  scholar  or  an  orator  for  its  head.  It 
applied  to  a  philosopher  to  undertake  its  direction.  Ho 
objected  that  his  philosophy  had  been  declared  incon- 
sistent with  the  Christian  faith,  and  his  mode  of  life  con- 
trary to  Christian  precept.  They  forgave  him  his  philo 
sophy,  his  horses  and  hounds,  his  wife  and  children, 
and  constituted  him  their  chief.  Age  was  of  no  conse- 
quence. A  youth  of  eighteen  has  been  saluted  bishop 
by  a  cry  which  seemed  to  the  multitude  the  direct  inspi- 
ration of  Heaven,  and  seated  in  the  chair  of  his  dignity 
almost  without  his  knowledge.  Once  established  on  his 
ei^iscopal  seat,  he  had  no  superier.  The  Eoman  Bishop 
had  not  yet  asserted  his  supremacy  over  the  Church. 
Each  prelate  was  sovereign  Pontiff  of  his  own  see,  and 
his  doctrines  for  a  long  time  regulated  the  doctrines  of 
his  flock.  Under  former  bishops,  Milan  had  been  Arian, 
under  Ambrose  it  was  orthodox,  and  with  a  change  of 
master  might  have  been  Arian  again.  The  emperors  had 
occasionally  interfered  with  their  authoritative  decisions, 
but  generally  the  dispute  was  left  in  divided  dioceses 
to  be  settled  by  argument,  when  the  rivals'  tempera 


PERSECUTION.  117 

allowed  such  a  mode  of  warfare,  but  more  frequently 
by  armed  bands  of  the  retainers  of  the  respective  creeds, 
and  sometimes  by  an  appeal  to  miracles.  But  with  this 
centnry  a  new  spirit  of  bitterness  was  let  loose  upon 
the  Church.  Councils  were  held,  at  which  the  doctrines 
of  the  minority  were  declared  dangerous  to  the  State, 
and  the  civil  power  was  invoked  to  carry  the  sentence 
into  effect.  In  Africa,  where  the  great  name  of  Augustin 
of  Hippo  admitted  no  opposition,  the  Donatists,  though 
represented  by  no  less  than  two  hundred  and  seventy- 
nine  prelates,  were  condemned  as  heretics,  and  given 
over  to  the  persecuting  sword.  But  in  other  quarters 
the  dissidents  looked  for  support  to  the  civil  power,  when 
it  happened  to  be  of  their  opinion  in  Church  affairs. 
Home  chose  Clovis,  the  politic  and  energetic  Frank,  for 
its  guardian  and  protector,  and  the  Arians  threw  them- 
selves in  the  same  way  on  the  support  of  the  Visigoths 
and  Burgundians.  A  difference  of  faith  became  a  pre- 
text for  war.  Clovis,  who  envied  his  neighbours  their 
territories  south  of  the  Loire,  led  an  expedition  against 
them,  crying,  "It  is  shameful  to  see  those  Arians  in 
possession  of  such  goodly  lands  !"  and  everywhere  a  vast 
activity  was  perceptible  in  the  Church,  because  its 
interests  were  now  connected  with  those  of  kings  and 
peoples.  In  earlier  times,  discussions  were  carried  on 
on  a  great  variety  of  doctrines  which,  though  widely 
spread,  were  not  yet  authoritatively  declared  to  bo 
articles  of  faith.  St.  Jerome  himself,  and  others,  had 
had  to  defend  their  opinions  against  the  attacks  of 
various  adversaries,  who,  without  ceasing  to  be  consi- 
dered true  members  of  the  Church,  wrote  powerfully 
against  the  worship  of  martyrs  and  their  relics;  against 
the  miracles  professedly  wrought  at  their  tombs ;  against 
fasting,  austerities,  and  celibacy.  No  appeal  was  made 
on  those   occasions   either  to  the   Bishop  of  Eomo  as 


/18 


FIFTH   CENTURY. 


head  of  the  Church,  or  to  the  emperor  as  head  of  the 
State.  Now,  however,  the  spirit  of  moderation  was 
banished,  and  the  decrees  of  councils  were  considered 
superior  to  private  or  even  diocesan  judgment.  Lifo 
and  freedom  of  discussion  were  at  an  end  under  an 
enforced  and  rigid  uniformity.  But  the  struggle  lasted 
through  the  century.  It  was  the  period  of  great  con- 
vulsions in  the  State,  and  disputations,  wranglings,  and 
struggle  in  the  Church.  How  these,  in  a  State  tortured 
by  perpetual  change,  and  a  Church  filled  with  energy 
and  fire,  acted  upon  each  other,  may  easily  be  supposed. 
The  doubtful  and  unsteady  civil  government  had  sub- 
ordinated itself  to  the  turbulent  ardour  of  the  perplexed 
but  highly-animated  Church.  After  the  conquest  of 
Rome,  where  was  the  barbaric  conqueror  to  look  for 
any  guide  to  internal  unity,  or  any  relic  of  the  vanished 
empire  by  which  to  connect  himself  with  the  past  ? 
There  was  only  the  Church,  which  was  now  not  only 
the  professed  teacher  of  obedience,  peace,  and  holiness, 
but  the  only  undestroyed  institution  of  the  State.  The 
old  population  of  Eome  had  been  wasted  by  the  sword, 
and  famine,  and  deportation.  The  emperors  of  the  West 
had  left  the  scene;  the  Roman  Senate  was  no  more. 
There  was  but  one  authority  which  had  any  influence 
on  the  wretched  crowd  who  had  returned  to  their 
ancient  capital,  or  sought  refuge  in  its  ruined  palaces  or 
grass-grown  streets  from  the  pursuit  of  their  foes ;  and 
that  was  the  Bishop  of  the  Christian  congregation — 
whose  palace  had  been  given  to  him  by  Constantine — 
who  claimed  already  the  inheritance  of  St.  Peter — and 
who  carried  to  the  new  government  either  the  support 
of  a  willing  people,  or  the  enmity  of  a  seditious  mob. 

A  new  hero  came  upon  the  scene  in  the  per- 

son  of  Theodoric,  the  Ostrogoth.     Odoacer  tried 

ji  vain  to  resist  the  two  hundred  thousand  warriors  of 


THEODORIC.  H^-- 

this  tribe  who  poured  upon  Italy  in  490,  and,  after  a 
long  resistance  in  Eavenna,  yielded  the  kingdom  of 
Italy  to  his  rival.  Theodoric,  though  an  Arian,  culti- 
vated the  good  opinion  of  the  orthodox,  and  gained  the 
favour  of  the  Roman  Bishop.  He  had  almost  a  super- 
stitious veneration  for  the  dignities  of  ancient  Eome. 
He  treated  with  respect  an  assembly  which  called  itself 
the  Senate,  but  did  not  allow  his  love  of  antiquity  to 
blind  him  to  the  degeneracy  of  the  present  race.  He 
interdicted  arms  to  all  men  of  Eoman  blood,  and  tried 
in  vain  to  prevent  his  followers  from  using  the  appel- 
lation "Eoman"  as  their  bitterest  form  of  contempt. 
Lands  were  distributed  to  his  followers,  and  they  occu- 
pied and  improved  a  full  third  of  Italy.  Equal  laws 
were  provided  for  both  populations,  but  he  forbade  the 
toga  and  the  schools  to  his  countrymen,  and  left  the 
studies  and  refinements  of  life,  and  ofiiccs  of  civil  dignity, 
to  the  native  race.  The  hand  that  holds  the  pen,  he 
said,  becomes  unfitted  for  the  sword.  But,  barbarian 
as  he  was  called,  he  restored  the  prosperity  which  the 
fairest  region  of  the  earth  had  lost  under  the  emperors. 
Bridges,  aqueducts,  theatres,  baths,  were  repaired; 
palaces  and  churches  built.  Agriculture  was  encouraged, 
attempts  were  made  to  drain  the  Pontine  Marshes;  iron- 
mines  were  worked  in  Dalmatia,  and  gold-mines  in  Brut- 
tium.  Large  fleets  protected  the  coasts  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean from  pirates  and  invaders.  Population  increased. 
taxes  were  diminished ;  and  a  ruler  who  could  neithei 
read  nor  write  attracted  to  his  court  all  the  learned  men 
of  his  time.  Already  the  energy  of  a  new  and  enter- 
prising people  was  felt  to  the  extremities  of  his  domi- 
nions. A  new  race,  also,  was  established  in  Gaul.  Klod. 
wig,  leader  of  the  Franks,  received  baptism  at  the  hands 
jf  St.  Remi  in  496,  and  began  the  great  line  of  French 
rulers,   who,  passing  his   name  through   the   softened 


^20  FIFTH    CENTURY. 

sound  of  Clovis,  presented,  in  the  different  families  who 
succeeded  him,  eighteen  kings  of  the  name  of  Louis,  as 
if  commemorative  of  the  founder  of  the  monarchy. 

In  England  the  petty  kingdoms  of  the  Heptarchy 
were  in  the  course  of  formation,  and  though,  when 
viewed  closely,  we  seemed  a  divided  and  even  hostile 
collection  of  individual  tribes,  the  historian  combines 
the  separate  elements,  and  tells  us  that,  before  the  fifth 
century  expired,  another  branch  of  the  barbarians  had 
settled  into  form  and  order,  and  that  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  had  taken  possession  of  its  place. 

With  these  newly-founded  States  rising  with  fresh 
vigour  from  among  the  decayed  and  festering  remains 
of  an  older  society,  we  look  hopefully  forward  to  what 
the  future  years  will  show  us. 


SIXTH  CENTURY. 


icings  of  ti)e  dFranks.      lamperors  of  tje  ISas! 

l.D.  A.D. 

Clovis. — [cont.)  Anastasius. — [cont.) 

511.  CniLDEBERT,  Thierry,  Clo-    518.  Justin. 

TAIRE,  ClODOMIR.  cot      t  t 

527.  Justinian  I. 

559.  Clotaire  (sole  king).  _._    _  _^ 

^  °'  565.  Justin  II. 

562.  Charibert,    Gontran,    Si-     ^^^    ^  ^_ 

578.  Tiberius  II. 
gebert  and  Childeric. 

584.  Clotaire  II.,  (of  Soissons.)     ^^^'  ^^urice. 

596.  Thierry   II.,  Theodobert, 
(of  Paris  and  Austrasia.) 

Ilutt)or0. 

Boethius,  Procopius,  Gildas,  Gregory  of  Tours,  Columba 
(520-597,)  Priscian,Columbanus,  Benedict,  Eyagrius,  (Schola* 
Ticcs,)  Fulgentius,  Gregory  the  Great. 


THE  SIXTH  CENTURY. 

BELISARIUS   AND   NARSES   IN   ITALY — SETTLEMENT    OF   THE 
LOMBARDS LAWS  OF  JUSTINIAN — BIRTH  OF  MOHAMMED. 

Theodoric,  though  not  laying  claim  to  universal 
empire  in  right  of  his  possession  of  Eome  and  Italy, 
exercised  a  sort  of  supremacy  over  his  contemporaries 
by  his  wisdom  and  power.  He  also  strengthened  his 
position  by  family  alliances.  His  wife  was  sister  of 
Klodwig  or  Clovis,  King  of  the  Franks.  He  married 
his  own  sister  to  Hunric,  King  of  the  Yandals,  his  niece 
to  the  Thuringian  king.  One  of  his  daughters  he  gave 
to  Sigismund,  King  of  the  Burgundians,  and  the  other 
to  Alaric  the  Second,  King  of  the  Visigoths.  Eelying 
on  the  double  influence  which  his  relationship  and  repu- 
tation secured  to  him,  he  rebuked  or  praised  the  poten- 
tates of  Europe  as  if  they  had  been  his  children,  and 
gave  them  advice  in  the  various  exigencies  of  their 
affairs,  to  which  they  implicitly  submitted.  Ho  would 
fain  have  kept  alive  what  was  left  of  the  old  Eoman 
civilization,  and  heaped  honours  on  the  Senator  Cassio- 
dorus,  one  of  the  last  writers  of  Eome.  "  We  send  you 
this  man  as  ambassador,"  he  said  to  the  King  of  the 
Burgundians,  "  that  your  people  may  no  longer  pretend 
to  be  our  equals  when  they  perceive  what  manner  of 
men  wo  have  among  us."  But  his  rule,  though  gene- 
rous, was  strict.  He  imprisoned  the  Bishop  of  Eome 
for  disobedience  of  orders  in  a  commission  he  had  given 
him,  and  repressed  discontent  and  the  quarrels  of  the 
%ctions  with  an  unsparing  hand.     But  the  death  of  this 

123 


124 


SIXTH   CENTURY. 


great  and  wise  sovereign  showed  on  what  unstable 
foundations  a  barbaric  power  is  built.  Frightful  tra- 
gedies were  enacted  in  his  family.  His  daughter  was 
murdered  by  her  nephew,  whom  she  had  associated 
with  her  in  the  guardianship  of  her  son.  But  ven- 
geance overtook  the  wrong-doer,  and  a  strange  revolution 
occurred  in  the  history  of  the  world.  The  emperor 
reigning  at  Constantinople  was  the  celebrated  J'lstinian. 
He  saw  into  what  a  confused  condition  the  affairs  of  the 
new  conquerors  of  Italy  had  fallen.  Eallying  round 
him  all  the  recollections  of  the  past — giving  command 
of  his  armies  to  one  of  the  great  men  who  start  up  un- 
expectedly in  the  most  hopeless  periods  of  history, 
whose  name,  Belisarius,  still  continues  to  be  familiar  to 
our  ears — and  rousing  the  hostile  nationalities  to  come 
to  his  aid,  he  poured  into  the  peninsula  an  army  with 
Eoman  discipline  and  the  union  which  community  of 
interests  affords.  In  a  remarkably  short  space 
of  time,  Belisarius  achieved  the  conquest  of 
Italy.  The  opposing  soldiers  threw  down  their  arms 
at  sight  of  the  well-remembered  eagles.  The  nations 
threw  off  the  supremacy  of  the  Ostrogoths.  Belisarius 
had  already  overthrown  the  kingdom  of  the  Yandals 
and  restored  Africa  to  the  empire  of  the  East.  He  took 
Naples,  and  put  the  inhabitants  to  the  sword.  He  ad- 
vanced upon  Eome,  which  the  Goths  deserted  at  his 
approach.  The  walls  of  the  great  city  were  restored, 
and  a  victory  over  the  fugitives  at  Perugia  seemed  to 
secure  the  whole  land  to  its  ancient  masters.  But 
Witig,  the  Ostrogoth,  gathered  courage  from  despair. 
He  besought  assistance  from  the  Franks,  who  had  now 
taken  possession  of  Burgundy ;  and  volunteers  from  all 
quarters  flocked  to  his  standard,  for  he  had  promised 
them  the  spoils  of  Milan.  Milan  was  immensely  rich, 
and  had  espoused  the  orthodox  faith.     The  assailant* 


TOTILA.  126 

jyere  Arians,  and  intent  on  plunder.  Sucli  destruction 
had  scarcely  been  seen  since  the  memorable  slaughter  of 
the  Huns  at  Chalons  on  the  Marne.  The  Ostrogoths  and 
Burgundian  Franks  broke  into  the  town,  and  the  streets 
were  piled  up  with  the  corpses  of  all  the  inhabitants. 
There  were  three  hundred  thousand  put  to  death,  and 
multitudes  had  died  of  famine  and  disease.  The  ferocity 
was  useless,  and  Belisarius  was  already  on  the  march ; 
Witig  was  conquered,  in  open  fight,  while  ho  was  busy 
besieging  Eome ;  Ravenna  itself,  his  capital,  was  taken, 
and  the  Ostrogothic  king  was  led  in  triumph  along  the 
streets  of  Constantinople. 
But  the  conqueror  of  the  Ostrogoths  fell  into  disfavour 
^,.  at  court.    He  was  summoned  home,  and  a  cjreat 

A.D.  540.  '  o 

man,  whom  his  presence  in  Italy  had  kept  in 
check,  availed  himself  of  his  absence.  Totila  seemed 
indeed  worthy  to  succeed  to  the  empire  of  his  country- 
man Theodoric.  He  again  peopled  the  utterly  ex- 
hausted Eome;  he  restored  its  buildings,  and  lived 
among  the  new-comers  himself,  encouraging  their  eiforts 
to  give  it  once  more  the  appearance  of  the  capital  of  the 
world.  But  these  efforts  were  in  vain.  There  was  no 
possibility  of  reviving  the  old  fiction  of  the  identity  of 
the  freshly-imported  inhabitants  and  the  countrymen  of 
Scipio  and  Caisar.  Only  one  link  was  possible  between 
the  old  state  of  things  and  the  new.  It  was  strange 
that  it  was  left  for  the  Christian  Bishop  to  bridge  over 
the  chasm  that  separated  the  Eome  of  the  Consulship 
and  the  Empire  from  the  capital  of  the  Goths.  Yet  so 
it  was.  While  the  short  duration  of  the  reigns  of  the 
barbaric  kings  prevented  the  most  sanguine  from  look- 
ing forward  to  the  stability  of  any  power  for  the  future, 
the  immunity  already  granted  to  the  clerical  order,  and 
the  sanctuary  afforded,  in  the  midst  of  the  wildest  ex- 
aesses  of  siege  and  storm,  by  their  shrines  and  churches. 


126 


SIXTH   CENTURY. 


had  affixed  a  character  of  inviolability  and  permanence 
to  the  influA)nce  of  the  ecclesiastical  chief.  At  Constan- 
tinople, the  presence  of  the  sovereign,  who  affected  a 
grandeur  to  which  the  pretensions  to  divinity  of  the 
Uoman  emperors  had  been  modesty  and  simplicity,  kept 
the  dignity  of  the  Bishop  in  a  very  secondary  place. 
But  at  Eome  there  was  no  one  left  to  dispute  his  rank. 
His  office  claimed  a  duration  of  upwards  of  four  hundred 
years;  and  though  at  first  his  predecessors  had  been 
fugitives  and  martyrs,  and  even  now  his  power  had  no 
foundation  except  in  the  willing  obedience  of  the  mem- 
bers of  his  flock,  the  necessity  of  his  position  had  forced 
him  to  extend  his  claims  beyond  the  mere  requirements 
of  his  spiritual  rule.  During  the  ephemeral  occupations 
of  the  city  by  Yandals  and  Huns  and  Ostrogoths,  and 
all  the  tribes  who  successively  took  possession  of  the 
great  capital,  he  had  been  recognised  as  the  representa- 
tive of  the  most  influential  portion  of  the  inhabitants 
As  it  naturally  followed  that  the  higher  the  rank  of  a 
ruler  or  intercessor  was,  the  more  likely  his  success 
would  be,  the  Christians  of  the  orthodox  persuasion  had 
the  wisdom  to  raise  their  Bishop  as  high  as  they  could. 
He  had  stood  between  the  devoted  city  and  the  Huns ; 
he  had  promised  obedience  or  threatened  resistance  to 
the  Goths,  according  to  the  conduct  pursued  with  regard 
to  his  flock  by  the  conquerors.  He  had  also  lent  to 
Belisarius  all  the  weight  of  his  authority  in  restoring 
the  power  of  the  emperors,  and  from  this  time  the 
Bishop  of  Eome  became  a  great  civil  as  well  as  eccle- 
siastical officer.  All  parties  in  turn  united  in  trying  to 
win  him  over  to  their  cause — the  Arian  kings,  by  kind- 
ness and  forbearance  to  his  adherents;  and  the  orthodox, 
by  increasing  the  rights  and  privileges  of  his  see.  And 
already  the  policy  of  the  Boman  Pontiffs  began  to  take 
the  path  it  has  never  deserted  since.     They  looked  out 


END   OF   THE    OSTROGOTHS.  127 

rn  all  quarters  for  assistance  in  their  schemes  of  ambitioii 
ftnd  conquest.  Emissaries  were  despatched  into  many 
nations  to  convert  them,  not  from  heathenism  to  Chris- 
tianity, but  from  independence  to  an  acknowledgment 
of  their  subjection  to  Eome.  It  was  seen  already  that 
a  great  spiritual  empire  might  be  founded  upon  the 
ruins  of  the  old  Eoman  world,  and  spread  itself  over  the 
perplexed  and  unstable  politics  of  the  barbaric  tribes. 
No  means,  accordingly,  were  left  untried  to  extend  the 
conquests  of  the  spiritual  Caesar.  When  Clovis  the 
Frank  wa  j  converted  by  the  entreaties  of  his  wife  from 
Arianiom  to  the  creed  of  the  Eoman  Church,  the  ortho 
dox  bishops  of  France  considered  it  a  victory  over 
their  enemies,  though  these  enemies  were  their  country- 
men and  neighbours.  And  from  henceforth  we  find  the 
different  confessions  of  faith  to  have  more  influence  in 
the  setting  up  or  overthrowing  of  kingdoms  than  the 
strength  of  armies  or  the  skill  of  generals.  Narses, 
who  was  appointed  the  successor  of  Belisarius,  was  a 
believer  in  the  decrees  of  the  Council  of  Nice.  His  or- 
thodoxy won  him  the  support  of  all  the  orthodox  Huns 
and  Heruleans  and  Lombards,  who  formed  an  army  of 
infuriated  missionaries  rather  than  of  soldiers,  and 
gained  to  his  cause  the  majority  of  the  Ostrogoths 
whom  it  was  his  task  to  fight.  Totila  in  vain  tried  to 
bear  up  against  this  invasion.  The  heretical  Ostrogoths, 
expelled  from  the  towns  by  their  orthodox  fellow-citizens, 
and  ill  supported  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  lands  they 
traversed,  were  defeated  in  several  battles ;  and  at  last, 
when  the  resisting  forces  were  reduced  to  the  paltry 
number  of  seven  thousand  men,  their  spirits  broken  by 
defeat,  and  a  continuance  in  Italy  made  useless  by  the 
hostile  feelings  of  the  population,  they  applied  to  Narses 
for  eome  means  of  saving  their  lives.  He  furnished  them 
with  vessels,  which  carried  them  from  the  lands  which, 


(28 


SIXTH   CENTURY. 


sixty  years  before,  had  been  assigned  them  by  the  great 
TheodoriC;  and  they  found  an  obscure  termination  to  so 
strange  and  checkered  a  career,  by  being  lost  and  mingled 
in  the  crowded  populations  of  Constantinople.  This  was 
in  553.  The  Ostrogoths  disappear  from  history.  Tho 
Visigoths  have  still  a  settlement  at  the  southwest  of  France 
and  in  tho  rich  regions  of  Spain,  but  they  are  isolated  by 
their  position,  and  are  divided  into  different  branches. 
The  Franks  are  a  great  and  seemingly  well-cemented 
race  between  the  Ehine  and  the  sea.  The  Burgundians 
have  a  form  of  government  and  code  of  laws  which  keep 
them  distinct  and  powerful.  There  are  nations  rising 
into  independence  in  Germany.  In  England,  Chris- 
tianity has  formed  a  bond  which  practically  gives  firm- 
ness and  unity  to  the  kingdoms  of  the  Heptarchy ;  and 
it  might  be  expected  that,  having  seen  so  many  tribes 
of  strange  and  varying  aspect  emerge  from  the  unknown 
regions  of  the  East,  we  should  have  little  to  do  but 
watch  the  gradual  enlightenment  of  those  various  races, 
and  see  them  assuming,  by  slow  degrees,  their  present 
respective  places ;  but  the  undiscovered  extremities  of 
the  earth  were  again  to  pour  forth  a  swarm  of  invaders, 
who  plunged  Italy  back  into  its  old  state  of  barbarism 
and  oppression,  and  established  a  new  people  in  the 
midst  of  its  already  confused  and  intermixed  populations. 
Somewhere  up  between  the  Aller  and  the  Oder  there 
had  been  settled,  from  some  unknown  period,  a  people 
of  wild  and  uncultivated  habits,  who  had  occasionally 
appeared  in  small  detachments  in  the  various  gatherings 
of  barbarians  who  had  forced  their  way  into  the  South. 
Following"  the  irresistible  impulse  which  seems  to  impel 
all  the  settlers  in  the  North,  they  traversed  the  regions 
already  occupied  by  the  Heruleans  and  the  Gepides,  and 
paused,  as  all  previous  invasions  had  done,  on  the  outer 
boundary  of  the  Danube.     These  were  the  Longobards 


IRRUPTIOJ^    OF  THE   LOMBARDS.  129 

Dr  Lombards,  so  called  from  the  spears,  bardi,  with 
which  they  were  armed ;  and  not  long  they  required  to 
wait  till  a  favourable  opportunity  occuiTcd  for  them  to 
cross  the  stream.  In  the  hurried  levies  of  Narses  some 
of  them  had  offered  their  services,  and  had  been  present 
at  the  victory  over  Totila  the  Goth.  They  returned,  in 
all  probability,  to  their  companions,  and  soon  the  hearts 
of  the  whole  tribe  were  set  upon  the  conquest  of  the 
beautiful  region  their  countrymen  had  seen.  If  they 
hesitated  to  undertake  so  long  an  expedition,  two  inci- 
dents occurred  which  made  it  indispensable.  Flying  in 
wild  fury  and  dismay  from  the  face  of  a  pursuing  enemy, 
the  Avars,  themselves  a  ferocious  Asiatic  horde  which 
had  terrified  the  Eastern  Empire,  came  and  joined  them- 
selves to  the  Lombards.  With  united  forces,  all  their 
tents,  and  wives  and  childi^en,  their  horses  and  cattle, 
this  dreadful  alliance  began  their  progress  to  Italy.  The 
other  incident  was,  that  in  revenge  for  the  injustice  of 
his  master,  and  dreading  his  further  malice,  Parses  him- 
self invited  their  assistance.  Alboin,  the  Lombard 
king,  was  chief  of  the  expedition.  He  had  been  refused 
the  hand  of  Eosamund,  the  daughter  of  Cunimond, 
chief  of  the  Gepides.  He  poured  the  combined  armies 
of  Lombards  and  Avars  upon  the  unfortunate  tribe, 
slew  the  king  with  his  own  hand,  and,  according  to  the 
inhuman  fashion  of  his  race,  formed  his  drinking-cup 
of  his  enemy's  skull.  He  married  Eosamund,  and  pur- 
sued his  victorious  career.  He  crossed  the  Julian  Alps, 
made  himself  master  of  Milan  and  the  dependent  terri- 
tories, and  was  lifted  on  the  shield  as  King  of  Italy.  At 
a  festival  in  honour  of  his  successes,  he  forced  his 
favourite  wine-goblet  into  the  hands  of  his  wife.  She 
recognised  the  fearful  vessel,  and  shuddered  while  she 
put  her  lips  to  the  brim.  But  hatred  took  possession  of 
her  heart.     She  promised  her  hand  and  throne  to  Kil* 


130 


SIXTH   CENTURY. 


mich,  one  of  her  attendants,  if  he  would  take  vengeanco 
on  the  tyrant  who  had  offered  her  so  intolerable  a 
wrong.  The  attendant  was  won  by  the  bride,  and  slew 
Alboin.  But  justice  pursued  the  murderers.  They 
were  discovered,  and  fled  to  Eavenria,  where  the  Exarch 
held  his  court.  Saved  thus  from  human  retribution, 
Rosamund  brought  her  fate  upon  herself.  Captivated 
with  the  prospect  of  marrying  the  Exarch,  she  presented 
a  poisoned  cup  to  Kilmich,  now  become  her  husband,  as 
he  came  from  the  bath.  The  effect  was  immediate,  and 
the  agonies  he  felt  told  him  too  surely  the  author  of  his 
death.  He  just  lived  long  enough  to  stab  the  wretched 
woman  with  his  dagger,  and  this  frightful  domes- 
tic tragedy  was  brought  to  a  close. 
Alboin  had  divided  his  dominion  into  many  little 
states  and  dukedoms.  A  kind  of  anarchy  succeeded 
the  strong  government  of  the  remorseless  and  clear- 
sighted king,  and  enemies  began  to  arise  in  different 
directions.  The  Franks  from  the  south  of  Franco 
began  to  cross  the  Alps.  The  Greek  settlements  began 
to  menace  the  Lombards  from  the  South.  Internal  dis- 
union was  quelled  by  the  public  danger,  and  Antharis, 
the  son  of  Cleph,  was  nominated  king.  To  strengthen 
himself  against  the  orthodox  Franks,  he  professed  him 
self  a  Christian  and  joined  the  Arian  communion.  With 
the  aid  of  his  co-religionists  he  repelled  the  invaders, 
and  had  time,  in  the  intervals  of  their  assaults,  to  ex- 
tend his  conquests  to  the  south  of  the  peninsula.  There 
he  overthrew  the  settlements  which  owned  the  Empire 
of  the  East ;  and  coming  to  the  extreme  end  of  Italy, 
the  savage  ruler  pushed  his  war-horse  into  the  water  as 
deep  as  it  would  go,  and,  standing  up  in  his  stirrupS; 
threw  forward  his  Javelin  with  all  his  strength,  saying 
^'That  is  the  boundary  of  the  Lombard  power."  Un- 
happily  for  the  unity  of  that  distracted  land,  the  war 


LOMBARD   POLITY.  131 

rior's  loast  was  unfounded^  and  it  has  continued  ever 
since  a  prey  to  discord  and  division.  Another  kingdom, 
however,  was  added  to  the  roll  of  European  states ;  and 

this  was  the  last  settlement  permanently  made 

on  the  old  Eoman  territory. 
The  Lombards  were  a  less  civilized  horde  than  any 
of  their  predecessors.  The  Ostrogoths  had  rapidly  as- 
similated themselves  to  the  people  who  suiTOunded 
them,  but  the  Lombards  looked  with  haughty  disdain 
on  the  population  they  had  subdued.  By  portioning 
the  country  among  the  chiefs  of  the  expedition,  they 
commenced  the  first  experiment  on  a  great  scale  of 
what  afterwards  expanded  into  the  feudal  system. 
There  were  among  them,  as  among  the  other  northern 
settlers,  an  elective  king  and  an  hereditary  nobility, 
owing  suit  and  service  to  their  chief,  and  exacting  the 
same  from  their  dependants ;  and  already  we  see  the 
working  of  this  similarity  of  constitution  in  the  diffusion 
throughout  the  whole  of  Europe  of  the  monarchical  and 
aristocratic  principle,  which  is  still  the  characteristic  of 
most  of  our  modern  states.  From  this  century  some 
authors  date  the  origin  of  what  are  called  the  "  Middle 
Ages,"  forming  the  great  and  obscure  gulf  between 
ancient  and  modern  times.  Others,  indeed,  wish  to  fix 
the  commencement  of  the  Middle  Ages  at  a  much 
earlier  date — even  so  far  back  as  the  reign  of  Constan- 
tine.  They  found  this  inclination  on  the  fact  that  to 
him  we  are  indebted  for  the  settlement  of  barbarians 
within  the  empire,  and  the  institution  of  a  titled  nobility 
dependent  on  the  crown.  But  many  things  were  needed 
besides  these  to  constitute  the  state  of  manners  and 
polity  which  we  recognise  as  those  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
»nd  above  them  all  the  establishment  of  the  monarchical 
principle  in  ecclesiastical  government,  and  the  recogni 


132 


SIXTH    CENTLRY, 


tion  of  a  sovereign  priest.     This  was  now  close  at  hand, 
and  its  approach  was  heralded  by  many  appearances. 

How,  indeed,  could  the  Church  deprive  itself  of  the 
organization  which  it  saw  so  powerful  and  so  successful 
in  civil  affairs  ?  A  machinery  was  all  ready  to  produce 
an  exact  copy  of  the  forms  of  temporal  administration. 
There  were  bishops  to  be  analogous  to  the  great  feuda- 
taries  of  the  crown;  priests  and  rectors  to  represent  the 
smaller  freeholders  dependent  on  the  greater  barons; 
but  where  was  the  monarch  by  whom  the  whole  system 
was  to  be  combined  and  all  the  links  of  the  great  chain 
held  together  by  a  point  of  central  union  ?  The  want 
of  this  had  been  so  felt,  that  we  might  naturally  have 
expected  a  claim  to  universal  superiority  to  have  long 
ere  this  been  made  by  a  Pope  of  Eome,  the  ancient  seat 
of  the  temporal  power.  But  with  his  residence  per- 
petually a  prey  to  fresh  inroads,  a  heretical  king  merely 
granting  him  toleration  and  protection,  the  pretension 
would  have  been  too  absurd  during  the  troubles  of  Italy, 
and  it  was  not  advanced  for  several  years.  The  neces- 
sity of  the  case,  however,  was  such,  that  a  voice  was 
heard  from  another  quarter  calling  for  universal  obe- 
dience,  and  this  was  uttered  by  the  Patriarch  of  Con- 
stantinople. Eome,  we  must  remember,  had  by  this  time 
lost  a  great  portion  of  her  ancient  fame.  It  was  re- 
served for  this  wonderful  city  to  rise  again  into  all  her 
former  grandeur,  by  the  restoration  of  learning  and  the 
knowledge  of  what  she  had  been.  At  this  period  all 
that  was  known  of  her  by  the  ignorant  barbarians  was, 
that  she  was  a  fresh-repaired  and  half-peopled  town, 
which  had  been  sacked  and  ruined  five  times  within  a 
century,  that  her  inhabitants  were  collected  from  all 
parts  of  the  world,  and  that  she  was  liable  to  a  repeti- 
lion  of  her  former  misfortunes.  They  knew  nothing 
of  the  great  men  who  had  raised  her  to  such  pre-eminence. 


GREGORY   THE    GREAT.  133 

She  had  sunk  even  from  being  the  capital  of  Italy,  and 
could  therefore  make  no  intelligible  claim  to  be  con- 
sidered the  capital  of  the  world.  Constantinople,  on 
the  other  hand,  which,  by  our  system  of  education,  we 
are  taught  to  look  upon  as  a  very  modern  creation 
compared  with  the  Eome  of  the  old  heroic  ages  of  the 
kings  and  consuls,  was  at  that  period  a  magnificent  me- 
tropolis, which  had  been  the  seat  of  government  for 
three  hundred  years.  The  majesty  of  the  Koman  name 
had  transferred  itself  to  that  new  locality,  and  nothing 
was  more  natural  than  that  the  Patriarch  of  the  city  of 
Constantine,  which  had  been  imperial  from  its  origin, 
and  had  never  been  defiled  by  the  presence  of  a  Pagan 
temple,  should  claim  for  himself  and  his  see  a  pre- 
eminence both  in  power  and  holiness.  Accordingly,  a 
demand  was  made  in  588  for  the  recognition  throughout 
the  Christian  world  of  the  universal  headship  of  the 
bishopric  of  Constantinople.  But  at  that  time  there 
was  a  bishop  of  Eome,  whom  his  successors  have  grate- 
fully dignified  with  the  epithet  of  Great,  who  stood  up 
in  defence,  not  of  his  own  see  only,  but  of  all  the  bishop- 
rics in  Europe.  Gregory  published,  in  answer  to  the 
audacious  claim  of  the  Eastern  patriarch,  a  vigorous 
protest,  in  which  these  remarkable  words  occur : — "  This 
I  declare  with  confidence,  that  whoso  designates  himself 
Universal  Priest,  or,  in  the  pride  of  his  heart,  consents 
to  be  so  named — he  is  the  forerunner  of  Antichrist."  It 
was  therefore  to  Eome,  on  the  broad  ground  of  the 
Christian  equality  of  all  the  chief  pastors  of  the  Church, 
that  we  owe  this  solemn  declaration  against  the  pretcn- 
fiions  of  the  ambitious  John  of  Constantinople. 

But  Constantinople  itself  was  about  to  fade  from  the 
minds  of  men.  Dissatisfied  with  the  opposition  to  its 
supremacy,  the  Eastern  Church  became  separated  in 
interest  and  discipline  and  doctrine  from  its  "Weeteni 


134 


SIXTH   CENTURY. 


branch.  The  intercourse  between  the  two  was  hostile, 
and  in  a  short  time  nearly  ceased.  The  empire  also 
was  so  deeply  engaged  in  defending  its  boundaries 
against  the  Persians  and  other  enemies  in  Asia,  that 
it  took  small  heed  of  the  proceedings  of  its  late  depend- 
encies, the  newly-founded  kingdoms  in  Europe.  It 
is  probable  that  the  refined  and  ostentatious  court  of 
Justinian,  divided  as  it  was  into  fanatical  parties  about 
Bome  of  the  deepest  and  some  of  the  most  unimportant 
mysteries  of  the  faith,  and  contending  with  equal  bitter- 
ness about  the  charioteers  of  the  amphitheatre  accord- 
ing as  their  colours  were  green  or  blue,  looked  with  pro- 
found contempt  on  the  struggles  after  better  goveril- 
ment  and  greater  enlightenment  of  the  rabble  of  Franks, 
and  Lombards,  and  Burgundians,  who  had  settled  them- 
selves in  the  distant  lands  of  the  West.  The  interior 
regulations  of  Justinian  formed  a  strange  contrast  with 
the  grandeur  and  success  of  his  foreign  policy.  By  his 
lieutenants  Belisarius  and  JSTarses,  he  had  reconquered 
the  lost  inheritance  of  his  predecessors,  and  held  in  full 
sovereignty  for  a  while  the  fertile  shores  of  Africa, 
rescued  from  the  debasing  hold  of  the  Yandals;  he  had 
cleared  Italy  of  Ostrogoths,  Spain  even  had  yielded  an 
unwilling  obedience,  and  his  name  was  reverenced  in 
the  great  confederacy  of  the  Germanic  peoples  who 
held  the  lands  from  the  Atlantic  eastward  to  Hungary, 
and  from  Marseilles  to  the  mouth  of  the  Elbe.  But  his 
home  was  the  scene  of  every  weakness  and  wickedness 
that  can  disgrace  the  name  of  man.  Kept  in  slavish 
submission  to  his  wife,  he  did  not  see,  what  all  the  rest 
of  the  world  saw,  that  she  was  the  basest  of  her  sex, 
and  a  disgrace  to  the  place  he  gave  her.  Beginning  as 
a  dancer  at  the  theatre,  she  passed  through  every  grade 
of  infamy  and  vice,  till  the  name  of  Theodora  became  a 
«ynonym  for  every  thing  vile  and  shameless.     Yet  this 


JUSTINIAN'S    LAW-REFORM.  136 

oian,  successful  in  war  and  politic  in  action,  though  con- 
temptible in  private  life,  had  the  genius  of  a  legislator; 
and  left  a  memorial  of  his  abilities  which  extended  its 
influence  through  all  the  nations  which  succeeded  to 
any  portion  of  the  Eoman  dominion,  and  has  shaped 
and  modified  the  jurisprudence  of  all  succeeding  times. 
He  was  not  so  much  a  maker  of  new  laws,  as  a  restorer 
and  simplifier  of  the  old ;  and  as  the  efforts  of  Justinian 
in  this  direction  were  one  of  the  great  features  by  which 
the  sixth  century  is  distinguished,  it  will  bo  useful  to 
devote  a  page  or  two  to  explain  in  what  his  work  con- 
sisted. 

The  Eoman  laws  had  become  so  numerous  and  so 
contradictory  that  the  administration  of  justice  was 
impossible,  even  where  the  judges  were  upright  and 
intelligent.  The  mere  word  of  an  emperor  had  been 
considered  a  decree,  and  legally  binding  for  all  future 
time.  Ko  lapse  of  years  seems  to  have  brought  a  law 
once  promulgated  into  desuetude.  The  people,  there- 
fore, groaned  under  the  uncertainty  of  the  statutes, 
which  was  further  increased  by  the  innumerable  glosses 
or  interpretations  put  upon  them  by  the  lawyers.  All 
the  decisions  which  had  ever  been  given  by  the  fifty-four 
emperors,  from  Adrian  to  Justinian,  were  in  full  force 
All  the  commentaries  made  upon  them  by  advocates 
and  judges,  and  all  the  sentences  delivered  in  accord- 
ance with  them,  were  contained  in  thousands  of  volumes; 
and  the  result  was,  when  Justinian  came  to  the  throne 
in  526,  that  there  was  no  point  of  law  on  which  any 
man  could  be  sure.  He  employed  the  greatest  juriscon- 
Bults  of  that  time,  Trebonian  and  others,  to  bring  some 
order  into  the  chaos ;  and  such  was  the  diligence  of  the 
eommissi oners,  that  in  fourteen  months  they  produced 
i.B  627  *^®  Justinian  Code  in  twelve  books,  containing  a 
condensation  of  all  previous  constitutions.     In 


186 


SIXTH   CENTURY. 


the  course  of  seven  years,  two  hundred  laws  and  fifty 
judgments  were  added  by  the  emperor  himself,  and  a 
new  edition  of  the  Code  was  published  in  534.  Under 
the  name  of  Institutes  appeared  a  new  manual  for  the 
legal  students  in  the  great  schools  of  Constanti- 
nople, Berytus,  and  Rome,  where  the  principles 
of  Roman  law  are  succinctly  laid  down.  The  third  of 
his  great  works  was  one  for  the  completion  of  which  he 
gave  Trebonian  and  his  assessors  ten  years.  It  is  called 
the  Digest  or  Pandects  of  Justinian,  because  in  it  were 
digested,  or  put  in  order  in  a  general  collection,  the  best 
decisions  of  the  courts,  and  the  opinions  and  treatises 
of  the  ablest  lawyers.  All  previous  codes  were  ran- 
sacked, and  two  thousand  volumes  of  legal  argument 
condensed;  and  in  three  years  the  indefatigable  law- 
reformers  published  their  work,  wherein  three  million 
leading  judgments  were  reduced  to  a  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand.  Future  confusion  was  guarded  against  by  a 
commandment  of  the  emperor  abolishing  all  previous 
laws  and  making  it  penal  to  add  note  or  comment  to 
the  collection  now  completed.  The  sentences  delivered 
by  the  emperor,  after  the  appearance  of  the  Pandects, 
were  published  under  the  name  of  the  Novellas;  and 
with  this  great  clearing-out  of  the  Augean  stable  of 
ancient  law,  the  salutary  labours  of  Trebonian  came  to 
a  close.  In  those  laws  are  to  be  seen  both  the  virtues 
and  the  vices  of  their  origin.  They  sprang  from  the 
wise  liberality  of  a  despot,  and  handle  the  rights  of  sub- 
jects, in  their  relation  to  each  other,  with  the  equani- 
mity and  justice  of  a  power  immeasurably  raised  above 
them  all.  But  the  unlimited  supremacy  of  the  ruler  is 
maintained  as  the  sole  foundation  for  the  laws  them- 
Belves.  So  we  see  in  these  collections,  and  in  the  spirit 
which  they  have  spread  over  all  the  codes  which  have 
taken  them  for  their  model,  a  combination  of  humanity 


MOHAMMED. 


157 


and  probity  in  the  civil  law,  with  a  tendency  to  exalt 
to  a  ridiciUous  excess  the  authority  of  the  governing 
power. 

This  has  been  a  century  of  wonderful  revohitions. 
Wo  have  seen  the  kingdom  of  the  Ostrogoths  take  the 
lead  in  Europe  under  the  wise  government  of  Theodoric 
the  Great.  We  have  seen  it  overthrown  by  an  army  of 
very  small  size,  consisting  of  the  very  forces  they  had 
80  recently  triumphed  over  in  every  battle ;  and  finally, 
after  the  victories  over  them  of  Belisarius  and  Narses, 
we  have  seen  the  last  small  remnant  of  their  name  re- 
moved from  Italy  altogether  and  eradicated  from  his- 
tory for  aU  future  time.  But,  strange  as  this  reassertion 
of  the  Greek  supremacy  was,  the  rapidity  of  its  over- 
throw was  stranger  still.  A  new  people  came  upon  the 
stage,  and  established  the  Lombard  power.  The  empii'e 
contracted  itself  within  its  former  narrow  bounds,  and 
kept  up  the  phantom  of  its  superiority  merely  by  the 
residence  of  an  Exarch,  or  provincial  governor,  at 
Eavenna.  The  fiction  of  its  power  was  further  main- 
tained by  the  Emperor's  official  recognition  of  certain 
rulers,  and  his  ratification  of  the  election  of  the  Eoman 
bishops.  But  in  all  essentials  the  influence  had  departed 
from  Constantinople,  and  the  Western  monarchies  were 
separated  from  the  East. 

In  the  Northwest,  the  confederacy  of  the  Franks, 
which  had  consolidated  into  one  immense  and  powerful 
kingdom  under  Clovis,  became  separated,  weakened, 
and  converted  into  open  enemies  under  his  degenerate 
successors. 

But  as  the  century  drew  to  a  close,  a  circumstance 
occurred,  far  away  from  the  scene  of  all  these  proceed- 
ings, which  had  a  greater  influence  on  human  afiaira 
than  the  reconquest  of  Italy  or  the  establishment  of 
France.    This  was  the  marriage  of  a  young  man  in  a 


138  SIXTH   CENTURY. 

town  of  Arabia  with  the  widow  of  his  former  master. 
In  564  this  young  man  was  born  in  Mecca,  where  his 
family  had  long  held  the  high  office  of  custodiers  and 
guardians  of  the  famous  Caaba,  which  was  popularly 
believed  to  bo  the  stone  that  covered  the  grave  of 
Abraham.  But  when  he  was  still  a  child  his  father 
died,  and  he  was  left  to  the  care  of  his  uncle.  The 
simplicity  of  the  Arab  character  is  shown  in  the  way  in 
which  the  young  noble  was  brought  up.  Abu  Taleb 
initiated  him  in  the  science  of  war  and  the  mysteries  of 
commerce.  He  managed  his  horse  and  sword  like  an 
accomplished  cavalier,  and  followed  the  caravan  as  a 
merchant  through  the  desert.  Gifted  with  a  high  poeti- 
cal temperament,  and  soaring  above  the  grovelling 
superstitions  of  the  people  surrounding  him,  he  used 
to  retire  to  meditate  on  the  great  questions  of  man's 
relation  to  his  Maker,  which  the  inquiring  mind  can 
never  avoid.  Meditation  led  to  excitement.  He  saw 
visions  and  dreamed  di*eams.  He  saw  great  things 
before  him,  if  he  could  become  the  leader  and  lawgiver 
of  his  race.  But  he  was  poor  and  unknown.  His  mis- 
tress Cadijah  saw  the  aspirations  of  her  noble  servant, 
and  offered  him  her  hand.  He  was  now  at  leisure  to 
mature  the  schemes  of  national  regeneration  and  re- 
ligious improvement  which  had  occupied  him  so  long, 
and  devoted  himself  more  than  ever  to  study  and  con- 
templation. This  was  Mohammed,  the  Prophet  of 
Islam,  who  retired  in  594  to  perfect  his  scheme,  and 
whose  empire,  before  many  years  elapsed,  extended  from 
India  to  Spain,  and  menaced  Christianity  and  Europe 
at  the  same  time  from  the  Pyrenees  and  the  Danube. 


SEVENTH  CENTURY. 


icings  of  tlje  dFcankg.  ISmpcrors  of  t\)c  lEast 

A.D.  A.D. 

Thierry  II.  and  Theodo-  Maurice — [cont.) 

BERT  II. — {cont.)  G02.  PnocAS. 

614.  Clotaire  III.  (sole king.)  611.  Heraclius. 

628.  Dagobert    and     Chari-  641.  Coxstantixe,  (and 
BERT.  others.) 

638.  SiGEBERT  and  Clovis  II.  642.  Coxstaxs. 

654.  Childeric  II.  668.  Coxstaxtius  V. 

679.  Thierry  IV.  685.  Justinian  II. 

692.  Clovis  III.     (Pepin,  695.  Leontius. 

Mayor.)  697.  Tiberius 

695.  Childebert  III.  (do.) 


autjow. 

Nexnius,  (620,)  Bede,  (674-735,)  Aldhelm,  Adamnands. 


THE  SEVENTH  CENTUEY. 

POWER   OF  ROME    SUPPOETED   BY   THE    MONKS C0NQUE8T3 

OF   THE   MOHAMMEDANS. 

This,  then,  is  the  century  during  which  Mohammod- 
anism  and  Christianity  were  marshalling  their  forces 
— ^unknown,  indeed,  to  each  other,  but  preparing,  accord- 
ing to  their  respective  powers,  for  the  period  when  they 
were  to  be  brought  face  to  face.  We  shall  go  eastward, 
and  follow  the  triumphant  march  of  the  warriors  of  the 
Crescent  from  Arabia  to  the  shores  of  Africa ;  but  first 
we  shall  cast  a  desponding  eye  on  the  condition  and 
prospects  of  the  kingdoms  of  the  West.  Conquest, 
spoliation,  and  insecurity  had  done  their  work.  Wave 
after  wave  had  passed  over  the  surface  of  the  old  Eoman 
State,  and  obliterated  almost  all  the  landmarks  of  the 
ancient  time.  The  towns,  to  be  sure,  still  remained,  but 
stripped  of  their  old  magnificence,  and  thinly  peopled  by 
the  dispossessed  inhabitants  of  the  soil,  who  congre- 
gated together  for  mutual  support.  Trade  was  carried 
on,  but  subject  to  the  exactions,  and  sometimes  the 
open  robberies,  of  the  avaricious  chieftains  who  had 
reared  their  fortresses  on  the  neighbouring  heights. 
Large  tracts  of  country  lay  waste  and  desolate,  or  were 
left  to  the  happy  fertility  of  nature  in  the  growth  of 
spontaneous  woods.  Marshes  were  formed  over  whole 
districts,  and  the  cattle  picked  up  an  uncertain  exist- 
ence by  browsing  over  great  expanses  of  poor  and  un- 
enclosed land.  These  flocks  and  herds  were  guarded  by 
nordes  of  armed  serfs,  who  camped  beside  them  on  the 

141 


'^2  SEVENTH   CENTURY. 

fields,  and  led  a  life  not  unlike  that  of  their  remote 
ancestors  on  the  steppes  of  Tartary.  A  man's  wealth 
was  counted  by  his  retainers,  and  there  was  no  supreme 
authority  to  keep  the  dignitaries,  even  of  the  same 
tribe,  from  warring  on  each  other  and  wasting  their 
rival's  country  with  fire  and  sword.  Agriculture,  there- 
fore, was  in  the  lowest  state,  and  famines,  plagues,  and 
other  concomitants  of  want  were  common  in  all  parts 
of  Europe.  One  beautiful  exception  must  be  made  to 
this  universal  neglect  of  agriculture,  in  favour  of  the 
Benedictine  monks,  established  in  various  parts  of  Italy 
and  Gaul  in  the  course  of  the  preceding  century.  Ee- 
ligious  reverence  was  a  surer  safeguard  to  those  lowly 
men  than  castles  or  armour  could  have  been.  No 
marauder  dared  to  trespass  on  lands  which  were  under 
the  protection  of  priest  and  bishop.  And  these  "Western 
recluses,  far  from  imitating  the  slothful  uselessness  of 
the  Eastern  monks,  turned  their  whole  attention  to  the 
cultivation  of  the  soil.  In  this  they  bestowed  a  double 
benefit  on  their  fellow-men,  for,  in  addition  to  the  posi- 
tive improvement  of  the  land,  they  rescued  labour  from 
the  opprobrium  into  which  it  had  fallen,  and  raised  it  to 
the  dignity  of  a  religious  duty.  Slavery,  we  have  seen, 
was  universally  practised  in  all  the  conquered  territories, 
and  as  only  the  slaves  were  compelled  to  the  drudgeries 
of  the  field,  the  work  itself  borrowed  a  large  portion  of 
the  degradation  of  the  unhappy  beings  condemned  to 
it ;  and  robbery,  pillage,  murder,  and  every  crime,  were 
considered  far  less  derogatory  to  the  dignity  of  free 
Frank  or  Burgundian  than  the  slightest  touch  of  the 
mattock  or  spade.  How  surprised,  then,  were  the 
haughty  countrymen  and  descendants  of  Clovis  or 
Alboin  to  see  the  revered  hands  from  w^iich  they  be- 
lieved the  highest  blessings  of  Heaven  to  flow,  employed 
in  the  daily  labour  of  digging,  planting,  sowing,  reaping, 


AGRICULTURE. 


143 


thrashing,  grinding,  and  baking !  At  first  they  looked 
incredulously  on.  Even  the  monks  were  disposed  to 
consider  it  no  part  of  their  conventual  duties.  But  the 
founder  of  their  institution  wrote  to  them,  "  to  beware 
of  idleness,  as  the  greatest  enemy  of  the  soul,"  and  not 
to  be  uneasy  if  at  any  time  the  cares  of  the  harvest 
hindered  them  from  their  formal  readings  and  regulated 
prayers.  "No  person  is  ever  more  usefully  employed 
than  when  working  with  his  hands  or  following  the 
plough,  providing  food  for  the  use  of  man."  And  the 
effects  of  these  exhortations  were  rapidly  seen.  Wher- 
ever a  monastery  was  placed,  there  were  soon  fertile 
fields  all  round  it,  and  innumerable  stacks  of  corn.  Gene- 
rally chosen  with  a  view  to  agricultural  pursuits,  we 
find  sites  of  abbeys  at  the  present  day  which  are  the 
perfect  ideal  of  a  working  farm ;  for  long  after  the  out- 
burst of  agricultural  energy  had  expired  among  the 
monks  of  St.  Benedict,  the  choice  of  situation  and  know- 
ledge of  different  soils  descended  to  the  other  ecclesias- 
tical establishments,  and  skill  in  agriculture  continued 
at  all  times  a  characteristic  of  the  religious  orders.  What 
could  be  more  enchanting  than  the  position  of  their 
monastic  homes  ?  Placed  on  the  bank  of  some  beautiful 
river,  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  the  low  flat  lands  en- 
riched by  the  neighbouring  waters,  and  protected  by 
swelling  hills  where  cattle  are  easily  fed,  we  are  too 
much  in  the  habit  of  attributing  the  selection  of  so 
admirable  a  situation  to  the  selfishness  of  the  portly 
abbot.  When  the  traveller  has  admired  the  graces  of 
Melrose  or  of  Tintern — the  description  applies  equally 
to  almost  all  the  foundations  of  an  early  date — and  has 
paid  due  attention  to  the  chastcness  of  the  architecture, 
and  beauty  of  "  the  long-resounding  aisle  and  fretted 
vault,"  ho  sometimes  contemplates  with  a  sneer  the 
matchless  charm  of  the  scenery,  and  exceeding  richness 


144 


SEVENTH   CENTURY. 


of  the  haugh  or  strath  in  which  the  building  stands 
"Ah,"  he  says,  "they  were  knowing  old  gentlemen, 
those  monks  and  priors.  They  had  fish  in  the  river,  fat 
beeves  upon  the  meadow,  red-deer  on  the  hill,  ripe  corn 
on  the  water-side,  a  full  grange  at  Christmas,  and  snowy 
sheep  at  midsummer."  And  so  they  had,  and  deserved 
them  all.  The  head  of  that  great  establishment  was 
not  wallowing  in  the  fat  of  the  land  to  the  exclusion  of 
envious  baron  or  starving  churl.  He  was,  in  fact,  set- 
ting them  an  example  which  it  would  have  been  wise 
in  them  to  follow.  He  merely  chose  the  situation  most 
fitted  for  his  purpose,  and  bestowed  his  care  on  the 
lands  which  most  readily  yielded  him  his  reward.  It 
was  not  necessary  for  the  monks  in  those  days  to  seek 
out  some  neglected  corner,  and  to  restore  it  to  cultiva- 
tion, as  an  exercise  of  their  ingenuity  and  strength. 
They  were  free  to  choose  from  one  end  of  Europe  to  the 
other,  for  the  whole  of  it  lay  useless  and  comparatively 
barren.  But  when  these  able-bodied  recluses,  if  such 
they  may  be  called,  had  shown  the  results  of  patient 
industry  and  skill,  the  peasants,  who  had  seen  their 
labours,  or  occasionally  been  employed  to  assist  them, 
were  able  to  convey  to  their  lay  proprietors  or  masters 
the  lessons  they  had  received.  And  at  last  something 
venerable  was  thought  to  reside  in  the  act  of  farming 
itself.  It  was  so  uniformly  found  an  accompaniment  of 
the  priestly  character,  that  it  acquired  a  portion  of  its 
sanctity,  and  the  rude  Lombard  or  half-civilized  Frank 
looked  with  a  kind  of  awe  upon  waving  corn  and  rich 
clover,  as  if  they  were  the  result  of  a  higher  intelli- 
gence and  purer  life  than  he  possessed.  Even  the 
highest  officers  in  the  Church  were  expected  to  attend 
to  these  agricultural  conquests.  In  this  century  we 
find,  that  when  kings  summoned  bishops  to  a  council,  or 
an  archbishop  called  his  brethren  to  a  conference,  care 


ADVANTAGES   OF  THE   CHURCH.  1*6 

was  taken  to  fix  the  time  of  meeting  at  a  season  which 
did  not  interfere  with  the  labours  of  the  farm.  Privi- 
leges naturally  followed  these  beneficial  labours.  Tho 
kings,  in  their  wondering  gratitude,  surrounded  the 
monasteries  with  fresh  defences  against  the  envy  or 
enmity  of  the  neighbouring  chiefs.  Their  lands  became 
places  of  sanctuary,  as  tho  altar  of  the  Church  had  been. 
Freedmen — that  is,  persons  manumitted  from  slavery, 
but  not  yet  endowed  with  property — were  everywhere 
put  under  the  protection  of  the  clergy.  Immunities 
were  heaped  upon  them,  and  methods  found  out  of 
making  them  a  separate  and  superior  race.  At  the 
Council  of  Paris,  in  613,  it  was  decreed  that  the  priest 
who  offended  against  the  common  law  should  be  tried 
by  a  mixed  court  of  priests  and  laymen.  But  soon  this 
law,  apparently  so  just,  was  not  considered  enough,  and 
the  trial  of  ecclesiastics  was  given  over  to  tho  eccle- 
siastical tribunals,  without  the  admixture  of  the  civil 
element.  Other  advantages  followed  from  time  to  time. 
The  Church  was  found  in  all  the  kingdoms  to  bo  so  use- 
ful as  the  introducer  of  agriculture,  and  the  preserver 
of  what  learning  had  survived  the  Eoman  overthrow, 
that  the  ambitious  hierarchy  profited  by  the  royal  and 
popular  favour.  They  were  the  most  influential,  or  per- 
haps it  would  be  more  just  to  say  they  were  the  only, 
order  in  the  State.  There  was  a  nobility,  but  it  was 
jarring  and  disunited;  there  were  citizens,  but  they 
were  powerless  and  depressed;  there  was  a  king,  but  he 
was  but  the  first  of  the  peers,  and  stood  in  dignified  isola- 
tion where  he  was  not  subordinate  to  a  combination  of 
the  others.  The  clergy,  therefore,  had  no  enemy  or 
rival  to  dread,  for  they  had  all  the  constituents  of 
power  which  the  other  portions  of  the  population  wanted. 
Their  property  was  more  secure;  their  lands  were 
better  cultivated;  thev  were  exempt  from  many  of 
7 


146 


SEVENTH   CENTURY. 


tho  dangers  and  burdens  to  which  the  hiy  barous  wer« 
exposed;  they  were  not  liable  to  the  risks  and  losses  of 
private  war;  they  had  more  intelligence  than  their 
neighbours,  and  could  summon  assistance,  either  in 
advice,  or  support,  or  money,  from  the  farthest  ex- 
tremity of  Europe.  Nothing,  indeed,  added  more,  at 
the  commencement  of  this  century,  to  the  authority  of 
those  great  ecclesiastical  chieftains,  than  the  circum- 
stance  that  their  interests  were  supported,  not  only  by 
their  neighbouring  brethren,  but  by  mitred  abbot  and 
lordly  bishop  in  distant  lands.  If  a  prior  or  his  monks 
found  themselves  ill  used  on  the  banks  of  the  Seine, 
their  cause  was  taken  up  by  all  other  monks  and  priors 
wherever  they  were  placed.  And  the  rapidity  of  their 
intercommunication  was  extraordinary.  Each  monas- 
tery seems  to  have  had  a  number  of  active  young 
brethren  who  traversed  the  wildest  regions  with  letters 
or  messages,  and  brought  back  replies,  almost  with  the 
speed  and  regularity  of  an  established  post.  A  convent 
on  Lebanon  was  informed  in  a  very  short  time  of  what 
had  happened  in  Provence — the  letter  from  the  Western 
abbot  was  read  and  deliberated  on,  and  an  answer  in- 
trusted to  the  messenger,  who  again  travelled  over  tho 
immense  tract  lying  between,  receiving  hospitality  at 
the  different  religious  establishments  that  occurred  upon 
his  way,  and  everywhere  treated  with  the  kindness  of  a 
brother.  Monasteries  in  this  way  became  the  centres 
of  news  as  well  as  of  learning,  and  for  many  hundred 
years  the  only  people  who  knew  any  thing  of  the  state 
of  feeling  in  foreign  nations,  or  had  a  glimpse  of  tho 
mutual  interests  of  distant  kingdoms,  were  the  cowled 
and  gowned  individuals  who  were  supposed  to  have 
given  up  the  world  and  to  be  totally  immersed  in  pen- 
Rnces  and  prayers.  What  could  Hereweg  of  the  strong 
hand  do  against  a  bishop  or  abbot,  who  could  tell  at  any 


CORRUPTION.  147 

hour  what  were  the  political  designs  of  conquerors  or 
kings  in  countries  which  the  astonished  warrior  did  not 
know  even  by  name;  who  retained  by  traditionary 
transmission  the  politeness  of  manner  and  elegance  of 
accomplishment  which  had  characterized  the  best  period 
of  the  Koman  power,  when  Christianized  noblemen,  on 
being  promoted  to  an  episcopal  see,  had  retained  the 
delicacies  of  their  former  life,  and  wrote  love-songs  as 
graceful  as  those  of  Catullus,  and  epigrams  neither  so 
witty  nor  so  coarse  as  those  of  Martial  ?  Intelligence 
asserted  its  superiority  over  brute  force,  and  in  this  cen- 
tury the  supremacy  of  the  Church  received  its  accom- 
plishment in  spite  of  the  depravation  of  its  principles. 
It  gained  in  power  and  sank  in  morals.  A  hundred 
years  of  its  beneficial  action  had  made  it  so  popular  and 
so  powerful  that  it  fell  into  temptations,  from  which 
poverty  or  unpopularity  would  have  kept  it  free.  The 
sixth  century  was  the  period  of  its  silent  services,  its 
lower  officers  endearing  themselves  by  useful  labour,  and 
its  dignitaries  distinguishing  themselves  by  learning  and 
zeal.  In  the  seventh  century  the  fruit  of  all  those  virtues 
was  to  be  gathered  by  very  different  hands.  Ambitious 
contests  began  between  the  different  orders  composing 
the  gradually  rising  hierarchy,  from  the  monk  in  his 
cell  to  the  Bishop  of  Rome  or  Constantinople  on  their 
pontifical  thrones.  It  is  very  sad,  after  the  view  wo 
have  taken  of  the  early  benefits  bestowed  on  many 
nations  by  the  labours  and  example  of  the  priests  and 
monks,  to  see  in  the  period  we  have  reached  the  total 
cessation  of  life  and  energy  in  the  Church ; — of  life  and 
energy,  we  ought  to  say,  in  the  fulfilment  of  its  duties; 
for  there  was  no  want  of  those  qualities  in  the  gratifica- 
tion of  its  ambition.  Forgetful  of  what  Gregory  had 
pronounced  the  chief  sign  of  Antichrist,  when  ho  op- 
posed the  pretension  of  his  rival  metropolitan  to  call 


148  SEVENTH   CENTURY. 

Himself  Universal  Bishop,  the  Bishops  of  Eome  "were 
deterred  by  no  considerations  of  humility  or  religion 
from  establishing  their  temporal  power.  Up  to  this 
time  they  had  humbly  received  the  ratification  of  their 
election  from  the  Emperors  of  the  East,  whose  subjects 
they  still  remained.  But  the  seat  of  their  empire  was 
far  off,  their  power  was  a  tradition  of  the  past,  and 
great  thoughts  came  into  the  hearts  of  the  spiritual 
chiefs,  of  inroads  on  the  territory  of  the  temporal  rulers 
In  this  design  they  looked  round  for  supporters  and 
allies,  and  with  a  still  more  watchful  eye  on  the  quarters 
from  which  opposition  was  to  be  feared.  The  bishops  as 
a  body  had  fallen  not  only  into  contempt  but  hatred. 
One  century  had  sufficed  to  extinguish  the  elegant 
scholarship  I  have  mentioned,  at  one  time  characteristic 
*f  the  Christian  prelates.  Ignorance  had  become  the 
badge  of  all  the  governors  of  the  Church — ignorance 
and  debauchery,  and  a  tyrannical  oppression  of  their 
inferiors.  The  wise  old  man  in  Eome  saw  what  advan- 
tage he  might  derive  from  this,  and  took  the  monks 
under  his  peculiar  protection,  relieved  them  from  the 
supervision  of  the  local  bishop,  and  made  them  imme- 
diately dependent  on  himself.  By  this  one  stroke  he 
gained  the  unflinching  support  of  the  most  influential 
body  in  Europe.  Wherever  they  went  they  held  foi  th 
the  Pope  as  the  first  of  earthly  powers,  and  began 
already,  in  the  enthusiasm  of  their  gratitude,  to  speak 
of  him  as  something  more  than  mortal.  To  this  the 
illiterate  preachers  and  prelates  had  nothing  to  reply. 
They  were  sunk  either  in  the  grossest  darkness,  or  in- 
volved in  the  wildest  schemes  of  ambition,  bishoprics 
being  even  held  by  laymen,  and  by  both  priest  and  lay- 
men used  as  instruments  of  advancement  and  wealth. 
From  these  the  Pontiff  on  the  Tiber,  whose  weaknesses 
and  vices  were  unknown,  and  who  was  held  up  for 


GRANTS   OF   LAND.  149 

invidious  contrast  with  the  bishops  of  their  acqnmntance 
by  the  libellous  and  grateful  monks,  had  nothing  to 
fear.  He  looked  to  another  quarter  in  the  political  sky, 
and  perceived  -with  satisfaction  that  the  kingly  office  also 
had  fallen  into  contempt.  Having  lost  the  first  .'mpulse 
which  carried  it  triumphantly  over  the  dismembered 
Roman  "world,  and  made  it  a  tower  of  strength  in  tho 
hands  of  warriors  like  Theodoric  the  Goth  and  Clovis  the 
Frank,  it  had  forfeited  its  influence  altogether  in  the  pitiful 
keeping  of  the  bloodthirsty  or  do-nothing  kings  who  had 
submitted  to  the  tutelage  of  the  Mayors  of  the  Palace. 

One  of  the  great  supports  of  the  royal  influence  was 
the  fiction  of  the  law  by  which  all  lands  were  supposed 
to  hold  of  the  Crown.  As  in  ancient  days,  in  the  Ger- 
man or  Scythian  deserts,  tho  ambitious  chieftain  had 
presented  his  favoui'ite  with  spear  or  war-horse  in  token 
of  approval,  so  in  the  early  days  of  the  conquest  of 
Gaul,  the  leader  had  presented  his  followers  with  tracts 
of  land.  The  war-horse,  under  the  old  arrangement, 
died,  and  the  spear  became  rotten;  but  the  land  was 
subject  neither  to  death  nor  decay.  What,  then,  was  to 
become  of  the  warrior's  holding  when  he  died  ?  On  this 
question,  apparently  so  personal  to  the  barbaric  chiefs 
of  the  time  of  Dagobert  of  Gaul,  depended  the  whole 
course  of  European  history.  The  kings  claimed  the 
power  of  re-entering  on  the  lands  in  case  of  the  demise 
of  the  proprietor,  or  even  in  case  of  his  rebellion  or  dis- 
obedience. The  Lend,  as  he  was  called — or  feudatory, 
as  he  would  have  been  named  at  a  later  time — disputed 
this,  and  contended  for  the  perpetuity  and  inalienability 
of  the  gift.  It  is  easy  to  perceive  who  were  the  winners 
in  this  momentous  struggle.  From  the  success  of  the 
lends  arose  the  feudal  system,  with  limited  monarchies 
and  national  nobilities.  The  success  of  the  kings  would 
have  resulted  in  despotic  thrones  and  enslaved  popula- 


150 


SEVENTH   CENTURY. 


tions.  Foremost  in  the  struggle  for  the  royal  supremacj^ 
had  been  the  famous  and  unprincipled  Brunehild,  a 
woman  more  resembling  the  unnatural  creation  of  a 
romance  than  a  real  character.  She  had  succeeded  at 
one  time  in  subordinating  the  lends,  by  exterminating 
the  recusants  with  remorseless  cruelty ;  and  her  triumph 
might  have  been  final  and  irrevocable  if  she  had  not 
had  the  bad  luck  or  impolitic  hardihood  to  offend  the 
Church.  The  Abbot  Columba,  a  holy  man  from  the  far- 
distant  island  of  lona  in  the  Hebrides  of  Scotland,  had 
ventured  to  upbraid  her  with  her  crimes.  She  banished 
him  from  the  Abbey  of  Luxeuil  with  circumstances  of 
peculiar  harshness,  and  there  was  no  hope  for  her  more. 
The  lends  she  might  have  overcome  singly,  for  they 
were  disunited  and  scattered ;  but  now  there  was  not  a 
monastery  in  Europe  which  did  not  side  with  her  foes 
Clotaire,  her  grandson,  marched  against  her  at  the  in- 
stigation of  priests  and  lends  combined.  She  was  con- 
quered and  taken.  She  was  tortured  for  three  days 
with  all  the  ingenuity  of  hatred,  and  on  the  fourth  was 
tied  to  the  tails  of  four  wild  horses  and  torn  to  pieces, 
though  the  mother,  sister,  daughter,  of  kings,  and  now 
more  than  eighty  years  of  age.  And  this  brings  us  to 
the  institution  and  use  of  the  strange  officers  we  have 
already  named  Mayors  of  the  Palace. 

To  aid  them  in  their  efforts  against  the  royal  assumjj- 
tions,  the  lends  long  ago  had  elected  one  of  themselves 
to  be  domestic  adviser  of  the  king,  and  also  to  command 
the  armies  in  war.  This  soon  became  the  recognised 
right  of  the  Mayor  of  the  Palace ;  and  as  in  that  state 
of  society  the  wars  were  nearly  perpetual,  and  bearers 
of  arms  the  only  wielders  of  power,  the  person  invested 
mth  the  command  was  in  reality  the  supreme  authority 
m  the  State.  When  the  king  happened  to  be  feeble 
either  in  body  or  mind,  the  mayor  supplied  his  place, 


POPULAR   GOVERNMENTS.  161 

without  even  the  appearance  of  inferiority ;  and  when 
Dagobert,  the  last  active  member  of  the  Merovingian 
family,  died  in  638,  his  successors  were  merely  the 
nominal  holders  of  the  Crown.  A  new  race  rose  into 
importance,  and  it  will  not  be  very  long  before  we  meet 
the  hereditary  Mayors  of  the  Palace  as  hereditary 
Kings  of  the  Franks.  Here,  then,  was  the  whole  of 
Europe  heaving  with  some  inevitable  change.  It  will 
be  interesting  to  look  at  the  position  of  its  different 
parts  before  they  settled  into  their  new  relations.  The 
constitutions  of  the  various  kingdoms  were  very  nearly 
alike  at  this  time.  There  were  popular  assemblies  in 
every  nation.  In  France  they  were  called  the  "  Fields 
of  May"  or  of  "  March,"  in  England  the  "  Wittenage- 
mot,"  in  Spain  the  "  Council  of  Toledo."  These  meet- 
ings consisted  of  the  freemen  and  landholders  and  bishops 
But  it  was  soon  found  inconvenient  for  the  freemen  and 
smaller  proprietors  to  attend,  in  consequence  of  the 
length  of  the  journey  and  the  miserable  condition  of  the 
roads ;  and  the  nobles  and  bishops  were  the  sole  persons 
who  represented  the  State.  The  nobles  held  a  parallel 
rank  to  each  other  in  all  countries,  though  called  by 
different  names.  In  France,  a  person  in  possession  of 
any  office  connected  with  the  court,  or  of  lands  pre- 
sented by  the  Crown,  was  called  a  lend  or  entrustion, 
a  count  or  companion,  or  vassal.  In  England  he  was 
called  a  royal  thane.  The  lower  order  of  freemen  were 
called  herimans,  or  inferior  thanes;  in  Latin  liberie  or 
more  simply,  honi  homines,  good  men.  Below  these  were 
the  Eomans,  or  old  inhabitants  of  the  country;  below 
these,  the  serfs  or  bondmen  attached  to  the  soil ;  and  far 
do\m,  below  them  all,  out  of  all  hope  or  consideration, 
the  slaves,  who  were  the  mere  chattels  of  their  lords. 
This,  then,  was  the  constitution  of  European  society 
when  the  Arabian  conquests  began — at  the  head  of  thff 


i6^  SEVENTH   CENTUKY. 

nation  the  King,  at  the  head  of  the  people  the  Church  • 
the  nobles  followed  according  to  their  birth  or  power  -, 
the  freemen,  whether  citizens  engaged  in  the  first  infant 
struggles  of  trade,  or  occupying  a  farm,  came  next ;  and 
the  wretched  catalogue  was  ended  by  the  despoiled 
serf,  from  w^hom  every  thing,  even  his  property  in  him- 
self, had  been  taken  away.  There  were  laws  for  tho 
protection  or  restraint  of  each  of  these  orders,  and  we 
may  gather  an  idea  of  the  ranks  they  held  in  public 
estimation  by  the  following  table  of  the  price  of  blood : — 

Sols. 
For  the  murder  of  a  freeman,  companion,  or  Icud  of  tho  king, 

killed  in  his  palace  by  an  armed  band 1800 

A  duke — among  the  Bavarians,  a  bishop 960 

A  relation  of  a  duke 640 

The  king's  leud,  a  count,  a  priest,  a  judge 600 

A  deacon 500 

A  freeman,  of  the  Salians  or  Eipuarians 200 

A  freeman,  of  the  other  tribes 160 

Tho  slave — a  good  workman  in  gold 100 

The  man  of  middle  station,  a  colon,  or  good  workman  in  silver...  100 

The  frcedman 80 

Tho  slave,  if  a  barbarian — that  is,  of  tho  conquering  tribe 55 

The  slave,  a  workman  in  iron 50 

The  serf  of  the  Church  or  the  king 45 

The  swineherd 30 

Tho  slave,  among  the  Bavarians 20 

Distinctions  of  dress  pointed  out  still  more  clearly  the 
difference  of  rank  and  station.  The  principal  variety, 
however,  was  the  method  of  wearing  the  hair.  The 
chieftain  among  the  Franks  considered  the  length  and 
profusion  of  his  locks  as  the  mark  of  his  superiority. 
His  broad  flowing  tresses  were  divided  up  the  middle 
of  his  head,  and  floated  over  his  shoulders.  They  were 
curled  and  oiled — ^not  with  common  butter,  like  some 
other  nations,  says  an  author  quoted  by  Chateaubriand  j 
not  twisted  in  little  plaits,  like  those  of  the  Goths,  hxki 


DIFFERENCES    OF    RANK.  15?* 

jareftiUy  combed  out  to  their  full  luxuriance.  The 
common  soldier,  on  the  other  hand,  wore  his  hair  long 
in  front,  but  trimmed  close  behind.  They  swore  by 
their  hair  as  the  most  sacred  of  their  oaths,  and  offered 
a  tress  to  the  Church  on  returning  from  a  successful 
war.  From  this  peculiar  consideration  given  to  the 
hair  arose  the  custom,  still  prevalent,  of  shaving  the 
heads  of  ecclesiastics.  They  were  the  serfs  of  God,  and 
sacrificed  their  locks  in  token  that  they  were  no  longer 
free.  "When  a  chief  was  dishonoured,  when  a  king  was 
degraded,  when  a  rival  was  to  be  rendered  incapable  of 
opposition,  he  was  not,  as  in  barbarous  countries,  put  to 
death  :  ho  was  merely  made  bald.  No  amount  of  popu- 
larity, no  degree  of  right,  could  rouse  the  people  in  sup- 
port of  a  person  whose  head  was  bare.  When  his  hair 
grew  again,  he  might  again  become  formidable ;  but  the 
scissors  were  always  at  hand.  A  tyrannical  king  clipped 
his  enemies'  hair,  instead  of  taking  off  their  heads. 
They  were  condemned  to  the  barber  instead  of  the  exe- 
cutioner, and  sometimes  thought  the  punishment  more 
severe.  The  sons  of  Clothilde  sent  an  emissary  to  her, 
bearing  in  his  hand  a  sword  and  a  pair  of  scissors 
"  O  queen,"  he  said,  "  your  sons,  our  masters,  wish  to 
know  whether  you  will  have  your  grandchildren  slain 
or  clipped."  The  queen  paused  for  a  moment,  and  then 
said,  "  If  my  grandchildren  are  doomed  not  to  mount 
the  throne,  I  would  rather  have  them  dead  than  hair- 
less." 

Distinguished  thus  from  the  lower  orders,  the  nobility 
soon  found  that  their  interests  differed  from  those  of  the 
Church.  The  Church  placed  itself  at  the  head  of  the  de- 
mocracy in  opposition  to  the  overweening  pretensions 
of  the  chiefs.  It  opened  its  ranks  to  the  conquered 
races,  and  invested  even  the  converted  serf  with  digni- 
ties which   placed   him   above  the   level  of  Thane  or 


164 


SEVENTH   CENTURY. 


Count.  The  head  of  the  Western  Church,  now  by 
general  consent  recognised  in  the  Bishop  of  Eome,  "svas 
not  slow  to  see  the  advantage  of  his  position  as  leader 
of  a  combination  in  favour  of  the  million.  The  doctrine 
of  the  equality  of  all  men  in  the  sight  of  Heaven  waa 
easily  commuted  into  a  demand  of  universal  submission 
to  the  Holy  See ;  and  so  wide  was  the  range  given  to 
this  claim  to  obedience  that  it  embraced  the  proudest 
of  the  nobles  and  haughtiest  of  kings.  It  was  a  satis- 
faction to  the  slave  in  his  dungeon  to  hear  that  the 
great  man  in  his  castle  had  been  forced  to  do  honfiage  to 
the  Church.  There  was  one  earthly  power  to  which 
the  oppressed  could  look  up  with  the  certainty  of  sup- 
port. It  was  this  intimate  persuasion  in  the  minds  of 
the  people  which  gave  such  undying  vigour  to  the 
counsels  and  pretensions  of  the  ecclesiastical  power.  It 
was  a  power  sprung  from  the  people,  and  exercised  for 
the  benefit  of  the  people.  The  Popes  themselves  were 
generally  selected  from  the  lowest  rank.  But  what  did 
it  matter  to  the  man  who  led  the  masses  of  the  trampled 
nations,  and  stood  as  a  shield  between  them  and  their 
tyrants,  whether  he  claimed  relationship  with  emperors 
or  slaves  ?  What  did  it  matter,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
those  hoping  and  trusting  multitudes,  whether  the  object 
of  their  confidence  was  personally  a  miracle  of  goodness 
and  virtue,  or  a  monster  of  sin  and  cruelty  ?  It  was  his 
office  to  trample  on  the  necks  of  kings  and  nobles,  and 
bid  the  captive  go  free.  While  he  continued  true  to  the 
people,  the  people  were  true  to  him.  Monarchs  who 
governed  mighty  nations,  and  dukes  who  ruled  in  pro- 
vinces the  size  of  kingdoms,  looked  on  with  surjDrise  at 
the  growth  of  a  power  supported  apparently  by  no 
worldly  arms,  but  which  penetrated  to  them  through 
their  courts  and  armies.  There  was  no  great  mind  to 
guide  the  opposition  to  its  claims.     The  bishops  were 


THE   IRISH    CHURCH. 


166 


sunk  in  ignorance  and  sloth,  and  had  lost  the  respect  of 
their  countrymen.  The  populations  everywhere  were 
divided.  The  succession  to  the  throne  was  uncertain. 
The  Franks,  the  leading  nation,  were  never  for  any 
length  of  time  under  one  head.  Neustria,  or  the 
Western  State,  comprising  all  the  land  between  the 
Mouse,  the  Loire,  and  the  Mediterranean,  Austrasia,  or 
the  Eastern  State,  comprising  the  land  between  the 
Ehine,  the  Meuse,  and  the  Moselle,  and  Burgundy,  ex- 
tending from  the  Loire  to  the  Alps,  were  at  one  time 
united  under  a  common  head,  and  at  another  held  by 
hostile  kings.  The  Visigoths  were  obscurely  quarrelling 
about  points  of  divinity  within  their  barrier  of  the  Py- 
renees. England  was  the  battle-field  of  half  a  dozen 
ittle  chieftains  who  called  themselves  kings ;  Germany 
was  only  civilized  on  its  western  border.  Italy  was  cut 
up  into  many  States,  Lombards  looking  with  suspicion 
on  the  Exarchate,  which  was  still  nominally  attached  to 
the  Eastern  Empire,  and  Greeks  established  in  the  South, 
sighing  for  the  restoration  of  their  power.  Over  all  this 
chaos  of  contending  powers  appeared  the  mitre  and 
crozier  of  the  Pope;  always  at  the  head  of  the  dis- 
affected people,  supported  by  the  monks,  who  felt  the 
tyranny  of  the  bishoj)S  as  keenly  as  the  commonalty 
felt  the  injustice  of  their  lords;  always  threatening 
vengeance  on  overweening  baron  or  refractory  monarch 
— enhancing  his  influence  with  the  glory  of  new  miracles 
wrought  in  his  support,  and  witnessed  unblushingly  by 
preaching  friars,  who  were  the  missionaries  of  papal 
power;  concentrating  all  authority  in  his  hands,  and 
gradually  laying  the  foundation  for  a  trampling  and 
domination  over  mind  and  body  such  as  the  world  had 
never  seen.  From  this  almost  universal  prostration 
before  the  claims  of  Eome,  it  is  curious  to  see  that  the 
native  Irish  were  totally  free.     With  contemptuous  in 


*^6  SEVENTH  CENTURY. 

dependence,  they  for  a  long  time  rejected  the  arrogap<. 
assumptions  of  the  successor  of  St.  Peter,  and  were  firm 
in  their  maintenance  of  the  equality  of  all  the  Sees.  Ix 
was  from  the  newly-converted  Anglo-Saxons  that  the 
chief  recruits  in  the  campaign  against  the  liberties  of 
the  national  churches  were  collected.  Almost  all  the 
names  of  missionaries  on  behalf  of  the  Roman  pontiff 
in  this  century  have  the  home-sound  in  our  ears  of 
«  Wighert,"  "  Willibald,"  "  Wernefried,"  or  "Adalbert." 
But  there  are  no  Gaelic  patronymics  from  the  Churches 
of  Ireland  or  Wales.  They  were  sisters,  they  haughtily 
said,  not  daughters  of  the  Roman  See,  as  the  Anglo-Saxon 
Church  had  been ;  and  dwelt  with  pride  on  the  antiquity 
of  their  conversion  before  the  pretensions  of  the  Roman 
Bishops  had  been  heard  of;  and  thus  was  added  one 
more  to  the  elements  of  dissension  which  wasted  the 
strength  of  Europe  at  the  very  time  when  unanimity 
was  most  required. 

But  towards  the  end  of  this  period  the  rumours  of 
a  new  power  in  the  East  drew  men's  attention  to  the 
defenceless  state  in  which  their  internal  disagreements 
had  left  them.  The  monasteries  were  filled  with  exag- 
gerated reports  of  the  progress  of  this  vast  invasion, 
which  not  only  threatened  the  national  existences  of 
Europe,  but  the  Christian  faith.  It  was  a  hostile  creed 
and  a  destroying  enemy.  What  had  the  Huns  been, 
compared  with  this  new  swarm — not  of  savage  warriors 
turned  aside  with  a  bribe  or  won  by  a  prayer,  but  en- 
thusiasts in  what  they  considered  a  holy  cause,  flushed 
with  victory,  armed  and  disciplined  in  a  style  superior 
to  any  thing  the  West  could  show  ?  We  should  try  to 
enter  into  the  feelings  of  that  distant  time,  when  day 
by  day  myriads  of  strange  and  hitherto  unconquerable 
onemies  were  reported  to  be  on  their  march. 

In   the  year   621  of  the  Christian   era,   Mohammed 


MOHAMMED.  16« 

made  his  triumphant  entry  into  Medina,  a  great  city  of 
Arabia,  having  been  expelled  from  Mecca  by  the  enmity 
of  the  Jews  and  the  tribe  of  Koreish.  This  entry  is 
called  the  Hegira  or  Flight,  and  forms  the  commence- 
ment of  the  Moslem  chronology.  All  their  records  are 
dated  from  this  event.  The  persons  who  accompanied 
him  were  few  in  number — his  father-in-law,  some  of  his 
wives,  and  some  of  his  warriors ;  but  the  procession  was 
increased  by  the  numerous  believers  in  his  prophetship 
who  resided  in  the  town.  At  this  place  began  the  public 
worship  inculcated  by  the  leader.  The  worshippers 
were  summoned  by  a  voice  sounding  from  the  highest 
pinnacle  of  the  mosque  or  church,  and  pronouncing  the 
words  which  to  this  hour  are  heard  from  every  minaret 
in  the  East : — "  God  is  great !  Grod  is  great !  There  is  no 
Grod  but  God.  Mohammed  is  the  ai)ostle  of  God.  Come 
to  prayers,  come  to  prayers !"  and  when  the  invitation 
is  given  at  early  dawn,  the  declaration  is  added,  "  Prayer 
ii  better  than  sleep !  prayer  is  better  than  sleep."  These 
exhortations  were  not  without  their  intended  effect. 
Prayer  was  uttered  by  many  lips,  and  sleep  was  banished 
from  many  eyes;  but  the  prayers  were  never  thought 
so  effectual  as  when  accompanied  by  sword  and  lance 
Courage  and  devotedness  were  now  the  great  supporta 
of  the  faith.  Ali,  the  husband  of  Fatima  the  favourite 
daughter  of  the  chief,  fought  and  prayed  with  the  same 
irresistible  force.  He  conquered  the  unbelieving  Jews 
and  Koreishites,  cleaving  armed  men  from  the  crown  to 
the  chin  with  one  blow,  and  wielding  a  city  gate  which 
eight  men  could  not  lift,  as  a  shield.  Abou  Bcker, 
whose  daughter  was  one  of  the  wives  of  Mohammed, 
was  little  inferior  to  Ali;  and  Mohammed  himself  saw 
visions  which  comforted  and  inspired  his  followers  in 
the  midst  of  battle,  and  shouted,  "  On,  on  I  Fight  and 
fear  not !    The  gates  of  Paradise  are  under  the  shade 


^^8  SEVENTH    CENTURY. 

of  swords.  He  will  assuredly  find  instant  admission 
who  falls  fighting  for  the  faith !"  It  was  impossible  to 
play  the  hypocrite  in  a  religion  where  such  strength  of 
arm  and  sharpness  of  blade  w^ere  required.  Prayers 
might  indeed  be  mechanical,  or  said  for  show,  but  the 
fighting  was  a  real  thing,  and,  as  such,  prevailed  over 
all  the  shams  which  were  opposed  to  it.  Looking  forth 
already  beyond  the  narrow  precincts  of  his  power,  Mo- 
hammed saw  in  ^e  distance,  across  the  desert,  the 
proud  empires  of  Persia  and  Constantinople.  To  both 
he  wrote  letters  demanding  their  allegiance  as  God's 
Prophet,  and  threatening  vengeance  if  they  disobeyed. 
Chosroes,  the  Persian,  tore  the  letter  to  pieces.  "  Even 
BO,''  said  Mohammed,  "shall  his  kingdom  be  torn.'^ 
Heraclius  the  Greek  was  more  respectful.  He  placed 
the  missive  on  his  pillow,  and  very  naturally  fell  asleep, 
and  thought  of  it  no  more.  But  his  descendants  were 
not  long  of  having  their  pillows  quite  so  provocative  of 
repose.  The  city  of  Medina  grew  too  small  to  hold 
the  Prophet's  followers,  and  they  went  forth  conquering 
and  to  conquer.  There  were  Abou  Beker  the  wise,  and 
Omar  the  faithful,  and  Khaled  the  brave,  and  Ali  the 
sword  of  God.  Mecca  fell  before  them,  and  city  after 
city  sent  in  its  adhesion  to  the  claims  of  a  Prophet  who 
had  such  dreadful  interpreters  as  these.  The  religion 
he  preached  was  comj)aratively  true.  He  destroyed  the 
idols  of  the  land,  inculcated  soberness,  chastity,  charity, 
and,  by  some  faint  transmission  of  the  precepts  of  the 
Bible,  inculcated  brotherly  love  and  forgiveness  of 
wrong.  But  the  sword  was  the  true  gospel.  Its  light 
I7as  spread  in  Syria  and  all  the  adjoining  territories. 
People  in  apparently  sheltered  positions  could  never  be 
Bure  for  an  hour  that  the  missionaries  of  the  new  faith 
would  not  be  climbing  over  their  walls  with  shouts  of 
loaquest^  ai  id  giving  them  the  option  of  conversion  oi 


HIS    SUCCESSOES.  16S 

death.  Power  spread  in  gradually-widening  circles,  but 
at  the  centre  sad  things  were  going  on.  Mohammed 
was  getting  old.  He  lost  his  only  son.  He  laid  him  in 
the  gi'ave  with  tears  and  sighs,  and  made  his  farewell 
pilgrimage  -to  Mecca.  Had  he  no  relentings  at  the 
visible  approach  of  the  end  ?  Was  he  to  go  to  the  grave 
untouched  by  all  the  calamities  he  had  brought  upon 
mankind  ?  the  blood  he  had  shed,  the  multitudes  he  had 
beguiled  ?  He  had  no  touch  of  remorse  for  any  of  these 
things ;  rather  he  continued  firmer  in  his  course  than 
ever — seemed  more  persuaded  of  the  genuineness  of  his 
mission,  and  uttered  prophecies  of  the  universal  exten- 
sion of  his  faith.  "  When  the  angels  ask  thee  who  thou 
art,"  he  said,  as  the  body  of  his  son  was  lowered  into 
the  tomb,  "  say,  God  is  my  Lord,  the  Prophet  of  God 
was  my  father,  and  my  faith  was  Islam  I"  Islam  con- 
tinued his  own  faith  till  the  last.  He  tottered  to  the 
mosque  where  Abou  Beker  was  engaged  in  leading  the 
prayers  of  the  congregation,  and  addressed  the  people 
for  the  last  time.  "  Every  thing  happens,"  he  said,  "  ac- 
cording to  the  will  of  God,  and  has  its  appointed  time, 
which  is  not  to  be  hastened  or  avoided.  My  last  com- 
mand to  you  is  that  you  remain  united ;  that  you  love, 
honour,  and  uphold  each  other;  that  you  exhort  each 
other  to  faith  and  constancy  in  belief,  and  to  the  per- 
formance of  pious  deeds :  by  these  alone  men  prosper ; 
all  else  leads  to  destruction."  A  few  days  after  this 
there  was  grief  and  lamentation  all  over  the  faithful 
lands.  He  died  on  his  sixty-third  birthday,  in  the 
eleventh  year  of  the  Hegira,  which  answers  to  our 
year  632. 

Great  contentions  arose  among  the  chief  disciples  for 
the  succession  to  the  leadership  of  the  faithful.  Abou 
Beker  was  father-in-law  of  the  Prophet,  and  his  daughter 
supported  his  cause.   Omar  was  also  father-in-J.iw  of  the 


1 60 


SEVENTH   CENTURY. 


Prophet,  and  his  daughter  supported  his  cause.  Othraai] 
had  married  two  of  the  daughters  of  the  Prophet,  but 
both  were  dead,  and  they  had  left  no  living  child.  Ali 
the  hero  of  the  conquest,  was  cousin-german  of  the 
Prophet,  and  husband  of  his  only  surviving  daughter. 
Already  the  practices  of  a  court  were  perceptible  in  the 
Emir's  tent.  The  courtiers  caballed  and  quarrelled;  but 
Ayesha,  the  daughter  of  Abou  Beker,  had  been  Moham- 
med's favourite  wife,  and  her  influence  was  the  most 
effectual.  How  this  influence  was  exercised  amid  the 
Oriental  habits  of  the  time,  and  the  seclusion  to  which 
the  women  were  subjected,  it  is  difficult  to  decide;  but, 
after  a  struggle  between  her  and  Ilafya,  the  daughter 
of  Omar,  the  widowed  Othman  was  found  to  have  no 
chance ;  and  only  Ali  remained,  still  young  and  ardent, 
and  fittest,  to  all  ordinary  judgments,  to  be  the  leader 
of  the  armies  of  Allah.  While  consulting  with  some 
friends  in  the  tent  of  Fatima,  his  rivals  came  to  an 
agreement.  In  a  distant  part  of  the  town  a  meeting 
had  been  called,  and  the  claims  of  the  different  pre- 
tenders debated.  Suddenly  Omar  walked  across  to 
where  Abou  Beker  stood,  bent  lowly  before  him,  and 
kissed  his  hand  in  token  of  submission,  saying,  "  Thou 
art  the  oldest  companion  and  most  secret  friend  of  the 
Prophet,  and  art  therefore  worthy  to  rule  us  in  his 
place."  The  example  was  contagious,  and  Abou  Beker 
was  installed  as  commander  and  chief  of  the  believers. 
A  resolution  was  come  to  at  the  same  time,  that  any 
attempt  at  seizing  the  supremacy  against  the  popillar 
will  should  be  punished  with  death.  Ali  was  constrained 
to  yield,  but  lived  in  haughty  submission  till  Fatima 
died  He  then  rose  up  in  his  place,  and  taking  his  two 
sons  with  him,  Hassan  and  Hossein,  retired  into  the 
inner  district  of  Arabia,  carrying  thus  from  the  camp 
of  the  usurping  caliph  the  only  blood  of  the  Prophet- 


PROGRESS   OP   ISLAM.  161 

iliief  which  flowed  in  human  veins.  Yet  the  spirit  of 
the  Prophet  animated  the  whole  mass.  Energy  equal  to 
Ali's  was  exhibited  in  Khaled.  Omar  was  earnest  in  the 
collection  of  all  the  separated  portions  of  the  Koran. 
Othman  was  burning  to  spread  the  new  empire  over  the 
whole  earth ;  and  in  this  combination  of  courage,  ambi- 
tion, and  fanaticism  all  Arabia  found  its  interest  to  join, 
and  ere  a  year  had  elapsed  from  the  death  of  the  Pro- 
phet, the  whole  of  that  peninsula,  and  all  the  swart 
warriors  who  travelled  its  sandy  steppes,  had  accepted 
the  great  watchword  of  his  religion — "  There  is  no  God 
but  (jrod,  and  Mohammed  is  the  Prophet  of  God."  Ere 
another  year  had  elapsed  the  desert  had  sent  forth  its 
swarms.  The  plains  of  Asia  were  overflowed.  The 
battle-cry  of  Zeyd,  the  general  of  the  army,  was  heard 
in  the  great  commercial  cities  of  the  East,  and  in  the 
lands  where  the  gospel  of  peace  had  first  been  uttered, 
Emasa  and  Damascus,  and  on  the  banks  of  Jordan.  It 
was  natural  that  the  first  eff'ort  of  the  false  should  be 
directed  against  the  true.  But  not  indiscriminate  was 
the  wrath  of  Abou  Beker  against  the  professors  of  Chris- 
tianity. The  claims  of  that  dispensation  were  ever 
treated  with  respect,  but  the  depraved  priesthood  were 
held  up  to  contempt.  "  Destroy  not  fruit-tree  nor  fertile 
field  on  your  path,"  these  were  the  instructions  of  the 
Caliph  to  the  leaders  of  the  host.  "  Be  just,  and  spare 
the  feelings  of  the  vanquished.  Eespect  all  religious 
persons  who  live  'n  hermitages  or  convents,  and  spare 
their  edifices.  But  should  you  meet  with  a  class  of  un- 
believers of  a  different  kind,  who  go  about  with  shaven 
crowns,  and  belong  to  the  synagogue  of  Satan,  be  sure 
you  cleave  their  skulls,  unless  they  embrace  the  true 
faith  or  render  tribute." 

Gentle   and  merciful,  therefore,  to   the  peaceful  in- 
habitants, respectful  to  the  gloomy  anchorite  and  in 


t62  SEVENTH   CENTURY. 

dustrious  monk,  but  breathing  death  and  disgrace 
against  the  proud  bishop  and  ambitious  presbyter,  the 
mighty  horde  moved  on.  Syi'ia  fell;  the  Persian  mon- 
archy was  menaced,  and  its  western  provinces  seized; 
a  Christian  kingdom  called  Hira,  situated  on  the  con- 
fines of  Babylonia,  was  made  tributary  to  Medina ;  and 
Khaled  stood  triumphant  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates, 
and  sent  a  message  to  the  Great  King,  commanding  him 
either  to  receive  the  faith,  or  atone  for  his  incredulity 
with  half  his  wealth.  The  despot's  ears  were  unaccus- 
tomed to  such  words,  and  the  fiery  deluge  went  on.  At 
the  end  of  the  third  year,  Abou  Beker  died,  and  Omar 
was  the  successor  appointed  by  his  will.  This  was 
already  a  departure  from  the  law  of  popular  election, 
but  Islam  was  busy  with  its  conquests  far  from  its 
central  home,  and  accepted  the  nomination.  Khaled's 
course  continued  westward  and  eastward,  forcing  his 
resistless  wedge  between  the  exhausted  but  still  majestic 
empires  of  the  Greeks  and  Persians.  Blow  after  blow 
resounded  as  the  great  march  went  on.  Constantinople, 
and  Madayn  upon  the  Tigris,  the  capitals  of  Christianity 
and  Mithrism,  were  equally  alarmed  and  equally  power- 
less. Omar,  the  Caliph — the  word  means  the  Successor 
of  the  Apostle — determined  to  join  the  army  which  was 
encamped  against  the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  and  added 
fresh  vigour  to  the  assailants  by  the  knowledge  that 
they  fought  under  his  eye. 

Heraclius,  the  degenerate  inheritor  of  the  throne  of 
Constantino,  and  Yezdegird,  the  successor  of  Darius  and 
Xerxes,  if  they  had  moved  towards  the  seat  of  war 
would  have  been  surrounded  by  all  the  pomp  of  theii 
3xalted  stations.  Battalions  of  guards  would  have  en- 
compassed their  persons,  and  countless  officers  of  their 
oourts  attended  their  progress. 

Omar^  who  saw  already  the  world  at  his  feet,  journeyed 


PROGRESS    OF   ISLAM. 


163 


by  slow  stages  on  a  wretched  camel,  carrying  his  pro- 
visions hanging  from  his  saddle-bow,  and  slept  at  night 
under  the  shelter  of  some  tree,  or  on  the  margin  of 
some  well.  He  had  but  one  suit,  and  that  of  worsted 
material,  and  yet  his  word  was  law  to  all  those  breath- 
less listeners,  and  wherever  he  placed  his  foot  from 
that  moment  became  holy  ground.  Jerusalem  and 
Aleppo  yielded;  Antioch,  the  chief  seat  of  Grecian 
government,  fell  into  his  hands ;  Tyre  and  Tripoli  sub- 
mitted to  his  power;  and  the  Saracenic  hosts  only 
paused  when  they  reached  the  border  of  the  sea,  which 
they  knew  washed  the  fairest  shores  of  Africa  and 
Europe.  It  did  not  much  matter  who  was  in  nominal 
command.  Khaled  died;  Amru  took  his  place;  and  yet 
the  tide  went  on.  The  great  city  of  Alexandria,  which 
disputed  with  Constantinople  the  title  of  Capital  of  the 
World,  with  its  almost  fabulous  wealth,  its  four  thou- 
sand palaces,  and  five  thousand  baths,  and  four  hundred 
theatres,  was  twice  taken,  and  brought  on  the  submis- 
sion and  conversion  of  the  whole  of  Egypt.  Amru  in 
his  hours  of  leisure  was  devoted  to  the  cultivation  of 
taste  and  genius.  In  John  the  Grammarian,  a  Chris- 
tian student,  he  found  a  congenial  spirit.  Poetry,  phi- 
losophy, and  rhetoric  were  treated  of  in  the  conversa- 
tions of  the  Arabic  conqueror  and  the  monkish  scholar. 
At  last,  in  reliance  on  his  literary  taste,  the  priest  con- 
fided  to  the  Moslem  that  in  a  certain  building  in  the 
town  there  was  a  library  so  vast  that  it  had  no  equal  on 
earth  either  for  number  or  value  of  the  manuscripts  it 
contained.  This  was  too  important  a  treasure  to  be 
dealt  with  without  the  express  sanction  of  the  Caliph. 
So  the  Christian  legend  is,  that  Omar  replied  to  the 
announcement  of  his  general,  "Either  what  those  books 
contain  is  in  the  Koran,  or  it  is  not.  If  it  is,  these 
volumes  are  useless ;  if  it  is  not,  they  are  wicked.     Euro 


'W  SEVENTH   CENTURY. 

them."  The  skins  and  parchments  heated  the  baths  ol 
Alexandria  for  many  months,  irrecoverable  monuments 
of  the  past,  and  an  everlasting  disgrace  to  the  Saracen 
name.  Yet  the  story  has  been  doubted;  at  least,  the 
extent  of  the  destruction.  Eather,  it  has  been  supposed, 
the  ignorant  fanaticism  of  the  illiterate  monks,  in 
covering  with  the  legends  of  saints  the  obliterated  lines 
of  the  classic  authors,  has  been  more  destructive  to  the 
literary  treasures  of  those  ancient  times  than  the  furious 
zeal  of  Amru  or  the  bigotry  of  Omar. 

K  this  great  overflow  from  the  desert  of  Arabia  had 
consisted  of  nothing  but  armed  warriors  or  destructive 
fanatics,  its  course  would  have  been  as  transient  as  it 
was  terrible.  The  Gothic  invaders  who  had  desolated 
Europe  fortunately  possessed  the  flexibility  and  adapt- 
iveness  of  mind  which  fitted  them  for  the  reception  of 
the  purer  faith  and  more  refined  manners  of  the  van- 
quished races.  They  mixed  with  the  people  who  sub- 
mitted to  their  power,  and  in  a  short  time  adopted  their 
habits  and  religion.  Whatever  faith  they  professed  in 
their  original  seats,  seems  to  have  worn  out  in  the  long 
course  of  their  immigration.  The  powers  they  had 
worshipped  in  their  native  wilds  were  local,  and  depend- 
ent on  clime  and  soil.  An  easy  opening,  therefore, 
was  left  for  Christianity  into  hearts  where  no  hostile 
deity  guarded  the  portal  of  approach.  But  with  the 
Saracens  the  case  was  reversed.  Incapable  of  assimila- 
tion with  any  rival  belief— jealously  exclusive  of  the 
commonest  intercourse  with  the  nations  they  subdued 
— ^unbending,  contemptuous  to  others,  and  carried  on 
by  burning  enthusiasm  in  their  own  cause,  and  confi- 
dence in  the  Prophet  they  served,  there  was  no  possi- 
bility of  softening  or  elevating  them  from  without.  The 
pomps  of  religious  worship,  which  so  awed  the  wonder 


HABITS    OF   THE    CALIPHS.  If55 

ing  tribes  of  Franks  and  Lombards,  were  lost  on  a 
people  who  considered  all  pomp  offensive  both  to  God 
and  man.  They  saw  the  sublimity  of  simple  plainness 
both  in  word  and  life.  Their  caliph  lived  on  rice,  and 
saddled  his  camel  with  his  own  hands.  He  ordered  a 
palace  to  be  burned,  which  Seyd,  who  had  conquered  for 
him  the  capital  of  Persia,  had  built  for  his  occupation. 
Unsocial,  bigoted,  austere,  drinking  no  wine,  accumu- 
»ating  no  personal  wealth,  how  was  the  mind  of  this 
warrior  of  the  wilderness  to  be  trained  to  the  hiabits  of 
civilized  society,  or  turned  aside  from  the  rude  instincts 
of  destructiveness  and  domination  ?  But  the  Arab  in- 
tellect was  subtle  and  active.  Mohammedanism,  indeed, 
armed  the  multitude  in  an  exciting  cause,  and  sent  them 
forth  like  a  destroying  fire;  but  there  was  wisdom, 
policy,  refinement,  among  the  chiefs.  While  they  de- 
vasted  the  worn-out  territories  of  the  Persian,  and  laid 
waste  his  ostentatious  cities,  which  had  been  purposely 
built  in  useless  places  to  show  the  power  of  the  king, 
they  founded  great  towns  on  sites  so  adapted  for  the 
purposes  of  trade  and  protection  that  they  continue  to 
the  present  time  the  emporiums  and  fortresses  of  their 
lands.  Balsorah,  at  the  top  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  at  the 
junction  of  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates,  was  as  wisely 
selected  for  the  commercial  wants  of  that  period  as 
Constantinople  itself  Bagdad  was  encouraged,  Cufa 
built  and  peopled  in  exchange  for  the  gorgeous  but  un- 
wholesome Madayn,  from  which  Yezdegird  was  driven. 
Many  other  towns  rose  under  the  protection  of  the 
Crescent;  and  by  the  same  impulse  which  made  the 
Saracens  anxious  to  raise  new  centres  of  wealth  and 
enterprise  in  the  East,  they  were  excited  to  the  most 
amazing  efforts  to  make  themselves  masters  of  the 
greatest  city  in  the  world,  the  seat  of  arts,  of  literature, 


166 


SEVENTH    CENTURY. 


and  religion;  and  they  pushed  forward  from  river  t(J 
river,  from  plain  to  plain,  till,  in  the  year  672,  they 
raised  their  victorious  standard  in  front  of  the  walls  of 
Constantinople.  Here,  however,  a  new  enemy  came  to 
the  encounter,  and  for  the  first  time  scattered  dismay 
among  the  Moslem  ranks.  From  the  towers  and  tur- 
rets came  down  a  shower  of  fire,  burning,  scorching, 
destroying,  wherever  it  touched.  Projected  to  great 
distances,  and  wrapping  in  a  moment  ship  after  ship 
iu  unextinguishable  flames,  these  discharges  appeared 
to  the  warriors  of  the  Crescent  a  supernatural  inter- 
ference against  them.  This  was  the  famous  Greek  fire, 
of  which  the  components  are  not  now  known,  but  it  was 
destructive  beyond  gunpowder  itself  Water  could  not 
quench  it,  nor  length  of  time  weaken  its  power.  For 
five  successive  years  the  assault  was  renewed  by  fresh 
battalions  of  the  Saracens,  but  always  with  the  same 
result.  So,  giving  up  at  last  their  attempts  against  a 
place  guarded  by  lightning  and  by  the  unmoved  courage 
of  the  Greek  population,  they  poured  their  thousands 
along  the  northern  shores  of  Africa.  Cyrene,  the  once 
glorious  capital  of  the  Pentapolis,  in  which  Carthago 
saw  her  rival  and  Athens  her  superior,  yielded  to  their 
power.  Everywhere  high-peaked  mosques,  rising  where 
a  short  time  before  the  shore  had  been  unoccupied  or  in 
cities  where  the  Basilicas  of  Christian  worship  had  been 
thrown  down,  marked  the  course  of  conquest.  Car- 
thage received  its  new  lords.  Hippo,  the  bishopric  of 
the  best  of  ancient  saints,  the  holy  Augustine,  saw  its 
church  supplanted  by  the  temples  of  the  Arabian  im- 
postor. A  check  was  sustained  at  Tchuda,  where  their 
•course  was  interrupted  by  a  combined  assault  of  Chris- 
tian Greeks  and  thQ  indigenous  Berbers.  Internal 
troubles  also  arrested  their  career,  for  thero  wore  dis- 


POWER    OF    ISLAM. 


le; 


putes  for  the  succession,  and  court  inbrigues  and  open 
murders,  and  all  the  usual  accompaniments  of  a  contest 
for  an  elective  throne.  One  after  another,  the  Caliphs 
had  been  murdered,  or  had  died  of  broken  hearts.  The 
old  race — the  "Companions,"  as  they  were  called,  be- 
cause they  had  been  the  contemporaries  and  friends  of 
Mohammed — had  died  out.  Ali,  after  three  disappoint- 
ments, had  at  last  been  chosen.  His  sons  Hassan  and 
Hossein  had  been  put  to  death ;  and  it  was  only  in  the 
time  of  the  eighth  successor,  when  Abdelmalek  had 
overcome  all  competition,  that  the  unity  of  the  Moslem 
Empire  was  restored,  and  the  word  given  for  conquest 
as  before.  This  was  in  the  77th  year  of  the  Hegira, 
(698  of  our  era,)  and  an  army  was  let  loose  upon  the 
great  city  of  Carthage,  at  the  same  time  that  move- 
ments Avere  again  ordered  across  the  limits  of  the 
Grecian  Empire,  in  Asia,  and  advances  made  towards 
Constantinople.  Carthage  fell — Tripoli  was  occupied — 
and  now,  with  their  territories  stretching  in  unbroken 
line  from  Syria  along  the  two  thousand  miles  of  the 
southern  shore  of  the  great  Mediterranean  Sea,  the  con- 
querors rested  from  their  labours  for  a  while,  and  pre- 
pared themselves  for  a  dash  across  the  narrow  channel, 
from  which  the  hills  of  Atlas  and  the  summits  of  Gibral- 
tar are  seen  at  the  same  time.  What  has  Europe,  with 
its  divided  peoples,  its  worn-out  kings,  its  indolent 
Church,  and  exhausted  fields,  to  oppose  to  this  compact 
phalanx  of  united  blood,  burning  with  fanatical  faith, 
submissive  to  one  rule,  and  supported  by  all  the  wealth 
of  Asia  and  Africa;  whose  fleets,  sweep  the  sea,  and 
whose  myriads  are  every  day  increased  by  the  acces 
Bion  of  fresh  nations  of  Berbers,  Mauritanians,  and  the 
nameless  children  of  the  desert  ? 
This  is  the  hopeless  century.     Manhood,  patriotism, 


168  SEVENTH   CENTURY. 

Christianity  itself,  are  all  at  the  lowest  ebb.  But  let 
us  turn  to  the  next,  and  see  how  good  is  worked  out  of 
evil,  and  acknowledge,  as  in  so  many  instances  the  his 
torian  is  obliged  to  do,  that  man  can  form  no  estimate 
of  the  future  from  the  plainest  present  appearances,  but 
that  all  things  are  in  the  hands  of  a  higher  intelligence 
whan  ours. 


EIGHTH  CENTURY. 


Itinss  of  tfie  iFtanfe0.      IBmptrors  of  fje  ISast. 


Childebert  III. — [conL) 

Tiberius. — [cord.) 

711. 

Dagobert  III.  ^  Charles 

711. 

Philippicus  Bardanes. 

716. 

Childeric.        >  Martel 

713. 

Anastasius  II. 

720. 

Thierry.          j  Mayor. 

714. 

Theodosius  III. 

742. 

Childeric  III. 

716. 

Leo  the  Isaurian. 

741. 

Constantine  Copronymus. 

Carlovingian  Line. 

775. 

Leo  IV. 

751. 

Pepin  the  Short. 

781. 

Constantine  Porphyrogb- 

768. 

Charlemagne. 

NITUS. 

802. 

Nicephorus. 

Alcuin,  (735-804,)  Bede,  (674-735,)  Egbert,  ClemexVb,  I>uk- 
OAL,  AccA,  John  Davascands 


THE  EIGHTH  CENTUEY. 

TEMPORAL  POWER  OF  THE  POPES — THE  EMPIRE   OF   CHAllLF^ 
MAGNE. 

Tms  is  indeed  a  great  century,  which  has  Pepin  of 
Heristhal  at  its  commencement  and  Charlemagne  at  its 
end.  In  this  period  we  shall  see  the  course  of  the  dis- 
solution of  manners  and  government  arrested  through- 
out the  greater  part  of  Europe,  and  a  new  form  given 
to  its  ruling  powers.  We  must  remember  that  up  to  this 
time  the  progress  of  what  we  now  call  civilization  was 
very  slow;  or  we  may  perhaps  almost  say  that  the 
extent  of  civilized  territory  was  smaller  than  it  had 
been  at  the  final  breaking  up  of  the  Eoman  Empire  four 
hundred  years  before.  England  had  lost  the  elevating 
influences  which  the  residence  of  Eoman  generals  and 
the  presence  of  disciplined  forces  had  spread  from  the 
seats  of  their  government.  Every  occupied  position 
had  been  a  centre  of  life  and  learning;  and  we  see  still, 
from  the  discoveries  which  the  antiquaries  of  the  present 
day  are  continually  making,  that  the  dwellings  of  the 
Prajtors  and  military  commanders  were  constructed  in 
a  style  of  luxury  and  refinement  which  argues  a  high 
state  of  culture  and  art.  All  round  the  circumference 
of  the  Eomanized  portion  of  Britain  these  head-quarters 
of  order  and  improvement  were  fixed ;  outside  of  it  lay 
the  obscure  and  tumultuous  populations  of  "Wales  and 
Scotland;  and  if  we  trace  the  situations  of  the  towns 
with  terminations  derived  from  castra,  (a  camp,)  wo  shall 
iee,  by  stretching  a  line  from  Winchester  in  the  south 

in 


172  EIGHTH   CENTURY. 

to  Ilchester,  thence  up  to  Gloucester,  Worcester,  Wrox, 
eter,  and  Chester,  how  carefully  the  Western  Gael  were 
prevented  from  ravaging  the  peaceful  and  orderly  in- 
habitants ;  and,  as  the  same  precautions  were  taken  to 
the  North  against  the  Piots  and  Scots,  we  shall  easily 
be  able  to  estimate  the  effect  of  those  numerous  schools 
of  life  and  manners  on  the  country-districts  in  which 
they  were  placed.  All  these  establishments  had  been 
removed.  Barbarism  had  reasserted  her  ancient  reign; 
and  at  the  century  we  have  now  reached,  the  institution 
which  alone  could  compete  in  its  elevating  effect  with 
the  old  imperial  subordination,  the  Christian  Church, 
had  not  yet  established  its  authority  except  for  the 
benefit  of  ambitious  bishops;  and  the  same  anarchy 
reigned  in  the  ecclesiastical  body  as  in  the  civil  orders. 
The  eight  or  nine  kingdoms  spread  over  the  land  were 
sufficiently  powerf\il  in  their  separate  nationalities  to 
prevent  any  unity  of  feeling  among  the  subjects  of  the 
different  crowns.  -A  prelate  of  the  court  of  Deiria  had 
no  point  of  union  with  a  prelate  protected  by  the  kings 
of  Wessex.  And  it  was  this  very  incapacity  of  combi- 
nation at  home,  from  the  multiplicity  of  kings,  which 
led  to  the  astonishing  spectacle  in  this  century  of  the 
efforts  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  clergy  in  behalf  of  the  Bishop 
of  Eome  in  distant  countries.  In  this  great  struggle  to 
extend  the  power  of  the  Popes,  the  regular  orders  par- 
ticularly distinguished  themselves.  The  fact  of  sub- 
mitting to  convent-rules,  of  giving  up  the  stormy  plea- 
sures of  independence  for  the  safe  placidity  of  unreason- 
ing obedience,  is  a  proof  of  the  desire  in  many  human 
minds  of  having  something  to  which  they  can  look  up, 
something  to  obey,  in  obeying  which  their  self-respect 
may  be  preserved,  even  in  the  act  of  offering  up  their 
self-will — a  desire  which,  in  civil  actions  and  the  atmo- 
sphere of  a  court,  leads  to  slavery  and  every  vice,  but  in 


ENGLISH   MONKS.  173 

a  monastery  conducts  to  the  noblest  sacrifices,  and  fills 
the  pages  of  history  with  saints  and  martyi'S.  The 
Anglo-Saxon,  looking  out  of  his  convent,  saw  nothing 
round  him  which  could  give  him  hope  or  comfort.  Laws 
were  unsettled,  the  various  little  principalities  were 
either  hostile  or  unconnected,  there  was  no  great  com- 
bining authority  from  which  orders  could  be  issued  with 
the  certainty  of  being  obeyed;  and  even  the  clergy, 
thinly  scattered,  and  dependent  on  the  capricious  favour 
or  exposed  to  the  ignorant  animosity  of  their  respective 
sovereigns,  were  torn  into  factions,  and  practically  with- 
out a  chief  But  theoretically  there  was  the  noblest 
chiefship  that  ever  was  dreamed  of  by  ambition.  The 
lowly  heritage  of  Peter  had  expanded  into  the  universal 
government  of  the  Church.  In  France  this  claim  had 
not  yet  been  urged ;  in  the  East  it  had  been  contemptu- 
ously rejected ;  in  Italy  the  Lombard  kings  were  hos- 
tile; in  Spain  the  Visigoths  were  heretic,  and  at  war 
among  themselves ;  in  Germany  the  gospel  had  not  yet 
been  heard ;  in  Ireland  the  Church  was  a  rival  bitterly 
defensive  of  its  independence;  but  in  England,  among 
the  earnest,  thoughtful  Anglo-Saxons,  the  majestic  idea 
of  a  great  family  of  all  the  Christian  Churches,  wherever 
placed,  presided  over  by  the  Yicar  of  Christ  and  receiv- 
ing laws  from  his  hallowed  lips,  had  impressed  itself 
beyond  the  possibiUty  of  being  effaced.  Eome  was  to 
them  the  residence  of  God's  vicegerent  upon  earth; 
obedience  to  him  was  worship,  and  resistance  to  his 
slightest  wish  presumption  and  impiety.  So  at  the 
beginning  of  this  century  holy  men  left  their  monasteries 
in  Essex,  and  Warwickshire,  and  Devon,  and  knelt  at 
the  footstool  of  the  Pope,  and  swore  fealty  and  submis- 
sion to  the  Holy  See. 

It  has  often  been  observed  that  the  Papacy  difl'era 
&om  other  powers  in  the  continued  vitality  of  its  mem 


174 


EIGHTH   CENTURY. 


bers  long  after  the  life  has  left  it  at  the  heart,  Eome 
was  weak  at  the  centre,  but  strong  at  the  extremity  of 
il^^  domain.  The  Emperor  of  Constantinople  looked  on 
the  Pope  as  his  representative  in  Church-affairs,  ratified 
his  election,  and  exacted  tribute  on  his  appointment. 
The  Exarch  of  Eavenna,  representing  as  he  did  the  civil 
majesty  of  the  successor  of  the  Cajsars,  looked  down  on 
bim  as  his  subordinate.  There  was  also  a  duke  in  Rome 
whose  oflGlce  it  was  to  superintend  the  proceedings  of  the 
bishop,  and  another  officer  resident  in  the  Grecian  court 
to  whom  the  bishop  was  responsible  for  the  manage- 
ment of  his  delegated  powers.  But  outside  of  all  this 
depression  and  subordination,  among  tribes  of  half-bar- 
baric blood,  among  dreamy  enthusiasts  contemplating 
what  seemed  to  them  the  simple  and  natural  scheme  of 
an  earthly  judge  infallible  in  wisdom  and  divinely  in- 
spired; among  bewildered  and  trampled  ecclesiastics, 
looking  forth  into  the  night,  and  seeing,  far  above  all 
the  storms  and  darkness  that  surrounded  them  in  their 
own  distracted  land,  a  star  by  which  they  might  steer 
their  course,  undimmed  and  unalterable — the  Pope  of 
Eome  was  the  highest  and  holiest  of  created  men.  No 
thought  is  worth  any  thing  that  continues  in  barren 
speculation.  Honour,  then,  to  the  brave  monks  of 
England  who  went  forth  the  missionaries  of  the  Papal 
kings !  Better  the  struggles  and  dangers  of  a  plunge 
among  the  untamed  savages  of  Friesland,  and  the  blood- 
stained forests  of  the  farthest  Germany,  in  fulfilment  of 
the  office  to  which  they  felt  themselves  called,  than  the 
lazy,  slumbering  way  of  life  which  had  already  begun  to 
be  considered  the  fulfilment  of  conventual  vows.  Sol- 
diers of  the  Cross  were  they,  though  fighting  for  the 
advancement  of  an  ambitious  commander  more  than  the 
success  of  the  larger  cause;  and  we  may  well  exult  in 
the  virtues  which  their  undoubting  faith  in  the  supremacy 


DESCENDANTS   OF   CLOVIS.  175 

of  tbo  pontiff  called  forth,  since  it  contrasts  so  nobly 
with  the  apathy  and  indifference  to  all  high  and  self- 
denying  co-operation  which  characterized  the  rest  of  the 
world.  "We  shall  see  the  monk  Winifried  penetrate,  as 
the  Pope's  minister,  into  the  darkness  beyond  the  Ehine, 
and  emerge,  with  crozier  and  mitre,  as  Boniface  the 
Archbishop  of  Mayence,  and  converter  to  the  Christian 
faith  of  great  and  populous  nations  which  were  long  the 
most  earnest  supporters  of  the  rights  and  pre-eminence 
of  Rome.  This  is  one  strong  characteristic  of  this  cen- 
tury, the  increased  vigour  of  the  Papacy  by  the  efforts 
of  the  Anglo-Saxons  on  its  behalf;  and  now  we  are  going 
to  another  still  stronger  characteristic,  the  further  in- 
crease of  its  influence  by  the  part  it  played  in  the  change 
of  dynasty  in  France. 

A  strange  fortune,  which  in  the  old  Greek  mytholo- 
gies would  have  been  looked  on  as  a  fate,  overshadowing 
the  blood-stained  house  of  Clovis,  had  befallen  his  de- 
scendants through  all  their  generations  for  more  than  a 
hundred  years.  Feeble  in  mind,  and  even  degenerated 
in  body,  the  kings  of  that  royal  line  had  been  a  sight  of 
grief  and  humiliation  to  their  nominal  subjects.  Married 
at  fifteen,  they  had  all  sunk  into  premature  old  age,  or 
died  before  they  were  thirty.  Too  listless  for  work, 
and  too  ignorant  for  council,  they  had  accepted  the  re- 
stricted sphere  within  which  their  duties  were  confined, 
and  showed  themselves,  on  solemn  occasions,  at  the 
festivals  of  the  Church,  and  other  great  anniversaries, 
bearing,  like  their  ancestors,  the  long  flowing  locks 
which  were  the  natural  sign  of  their  crowned  supremacy, 
seated  in  a  wagon  drawn  by  oxen,  and  driven  by  a 
wagoner  with  a  goad — a  primitive  relic  of  vanished 
times,  and  as  much  out  of  place  in  Paris  in  the  eighth 
century  as  the  state  carriage  of  the  Queen  or  the  Lord. 
Mayor's  coach  of  the  present  day  among  ourselves 


176  EIGHTH   CENTUKY. 

Strange  thoughts  must  have  passed  through  the  minds 
of  the  spectators  as  they  saw  the  successors  of  the  rough 
leader  of  the  Franks  degraded  to  this  condition ;  but  the 
change  had  been  gradual;  the  public  sentiment  had 
become  reconciled  to  the  apparent  uselessness  of  the 
highest  offices  of  the  State ;  for  under  another  title,  and 
with  much  inferior  rank,  there  was  a  man  who  held  the 
reins  of  government  with  a  hand  of  iron,  and  whose 
power  was  perhaps  strengthened  by  the  fiction  which 
called  him  the  servant  and  minister  of  the  faineant  or 
do-nothing  king.  A  succession  of  men  arose  in  the 
family  of  the  mayors  of  the  palace,  as  remarkable  for 
policy  and  talent  as  the  representatives  of  the  royal  line 
were  for  the  want  of  these  qualities.  The  origin  of 
their  office  was  conveniently  forgotten,  or  converted  by 
the  flattery  of  their  dependants  into  an  equality  with 
the  monarchs.  Chosen,  they  said,  by  the  same  elective 
body  which  nominated  the  king,  they  were  as  much  en- 
titled to  the  command  of  the  army  and  the  administra- 
tion of  the  law  as  their  nominal  masters  to  the  posses- 
sion of  the  palace  and  royal  name.  And  when  for  a 
long  period  this  claim  was  allowed,  who  was  there  to 
stand  up  in  opposition,  either  legal  or  forcible,  to  a  man 
who  appointed  all  the  judges  and  commanded  all  the 
troops?  The  office  at  last  became  hereditary.  The 
successive  mayors  left  their  dignity  to  their  sons  by 
will ;  and  time  might  have  been  slow  in  bringing  power 
and  title  into  harmony  with  each  by  giving  the  name 
of  king  to  the  man  who  already  exercised  all  the  kingly 
power  and  fulfilled  all  the  kingly  duties,  if  Charles  Mar- 
tel,  the  mayor,  had  not,  in  732,  established  such  claims 
to  the  gratitude  of  Europe  by  his  defeat  of  the  Saracens, 
who  were  about  to  overrun  the  whole  of  Christendom, 
that  it  was  impossible  to  refuse  either  to  himself  or 
his  successor  the  highest  dignity  which  Europe  had  tc 


CHARLES   MARTEL. 


177 


bestow.  When  other  rulers  and  princes  were  willing  t« 
acknowledge  his  superiority,  not  only  in  power,  but  ir 
rank  and  dignity,  it  was  necessary  that  their  submission 
should  be  offered,  not  to  a  mere  Major-domo,  or  chief 
domestic  of  a  court,  but  to  a  free  sovereign  and  anointed 
king.  The  two  most  amazing  fictions,  therefore,  which 
ever  flourished  on  the  contemptuous  forbearance  of  man- 
kind, were  both  about  to  exph'e  beneath  the  breath  of 
reality  at  this  time — ^the  kingship  of  the  descendants  of 
Clovis,  and  the  pretensions  of  the  successors  of  Constan- 
tine.  The  Saracens  appeared  upon  the  scene,  and  those 
gibbering  and  unsubstantial  ghosts,  as  if  they  scented 
the  morning  air,  immediately  disappeared.  The  Empe- 
rors of  the  East,  by  a  self-deluding  process,  which  pre- 
served their  dignity  and  flattered  their  pride,  professed 
still  to  consider  themselves  the  lords  of  the  Eoman 
Empire,  and  took  particular  pains  to  acknowledge  the 
kings  and  potentates,  who  established  themselves  in  the 
various  portions  of  it,  as  their  representatives  and  lieu- 
tenants. They  lost  no  time  in  sending  the  title  of  Patri- 
cian and  the  ensigns  of  royal  rank  to  the  successful 
founders  of  a  new  dynasty,  and  had  gained  their  object 
if  they  received  the  new  ruler's  thanks  in  return.  At 
Kome,  as  we  have  said,  they  protected  the  bishop,  and 
gave  him  the  investiture  of  his  office.  They  retained 
also  the  territories  called  the  Exarchate  of  Eavenna, 
but  with  no  power  of  vindicating  their  authority  if  it 
was  disputed,  or  of  exacting  revenue,  except  what  the 
gratitude  of  the  bishop  or  the  Exarch  might  induce 
them  to  present  to  their  patron  on  their  nomination  or 
instalment.  A  long-haired,  sad-countenanced,  decrepit 
young  man  in  a  wagon  drawn  by  oxen,  and  a  vain 
voluptuary,  wrapped  in  Oriental  splendour,  without  in- 
fluence or  wealth,  were  the  representatives  at  this  time 
of  the  iiTesistible  power  of  the  Frankish  warriors,  and 


178 


EIGHTH   CENTURT. 


the  glories  of  Julius  and  Augustus.  But  the  present  haa 
its  representatives  as  well  as  the  past.  Charles  Martel 
had  still  the  Frankish  sword  at  his  command;  the 
Eoman  Pontiff  had  thousands  ready  to  believe  and  sup- 
port his  claims  to  be  the  spiritual  ruler  of  the  world. 
Something  was  required  to  unite  them  in  one  vast  effort 
at  unity  and  independence,  and  this  opportunity  was 
afforded  them  by  the  common  danger  to  which  the 
Saracenic  invasion  exposed  equally  the  civil  and  eccle- 
siastical power.  Africa,  we  have  seen,  was  fringed 
along  the  whole  of  the  Mediterranean  border  with 
the  followers  of  the  Prophet.  In  one  generation  the 
blood  of  the  Arabian  and  Mauritanian  deserts  became 
so  blended,  that  no  distinction  whatever  existed  between 
the  men  of  Mecca  and  Medina  and  the  native  tribes. 
Where  Carthaginian  and  Roman  civilization  had  never 
penetrated,  the  faith  of  Mohammed  was  accepted  as  an 
indigenous  growth.  Fanaticism  and  ambition  sailed 
across  the  Channel;  and  early  in  this  century  the  hot 
breath  of  Mohammedanism  had  dried  up  the  promise 
of  Spain ;  countless  warriors  crossed  to  Gibraltar ;  their 
losses  were  supplied  by  the  inexhaustible  populations 
from  the  interior,  (the  ancestors  of  the  Abd-el  Kaders 
and  Ben  Muzas  of  modern  times,)  and,  elate  with  hopes 
of  universal  conquest,  the  crowded  tents  of  the  Moslem 
army  were  seen  on  the  northern  slopes  of  the  Pyrenees, 
and  presently  all  the  plains  of  Languedoc,  and  the  cen- 
tral fields  of  France  as  far  up  as  the  Loire,  were  in- 
undated by  horse  and  man.  Incredible  accounts  are 
given  of  the  number  and  activity  of  the  desert  steeds 
bestrode  by  these  turbaned  apostles.  A  march  of  a 
hundred  miles — a  village  set  on  fire,  and  all  the  males 
extirpated — strange-looking  visages,  and  wild  arrays 
of  galloping  battalions  seen  by  terrified  watchers  from 
the  walls  of  Paris  itself;  then,  in  the  twinkling  of  an 


BATTLE   OF   TOURS.  I'tf 

eye,  nothing  visible  but  the  distant  dust  raised  up  in 
their  almost  unperceived  retreat, — these  were  the  pecu- 
liarities of  this  new  and  unheard-of  warfare.  And 
while  these  dashes  were  made  from  the  centre  of  the 
invasion,  alarming  the  inhabitants  at  the  extremities 
of  the  kingdom,  the  host  steadily  moved  on,  secured 
tho  ground  behind  it  before  any  fresh  advance,  and 
united  in  this  way  the  steadiness  of  European  settle- 
ment with  the  wild  fury  of  the  original  mode  of  attack. 
Already  the  provinces  abutting  on  the  Pyrenees  had 
owned  their  power.  Gascony  up  to  the  Garonne,  and 
the  Narbonnais  nearly  to  the  Rhine,  had  s.ubmitted  to 
the  conquerors ;  but  when  the  dispossessed  proprietors 
of  Novempopulania  and  Septimania,  as  those  districts 
were  then  called,  and  the  powerful  Duke  of  Aquitaine, 
also  fled  before  the  advancing  armies;  when  all  -the 
churches  were  filled  with  prayer,  and  all  the  towns 
were  in  momentary  expectation  of  seeing  the  irresist- 
ible horsemen  before  their  walls,  patriotism  and  re- 
ligion combined  to  call  upon  all  the  Franks  and  all  the 
Christians  to  expel  the  infidel  invader.  So  Charles,  the 
son  of  Pepin,  whose  exploits  against  the  Prisons  and 
other  barbaric  peoples  in  the  North  had  already  ac- 
quired for  him  the  complimentary  name  of  Martel,  or 
the  Hammer,  put  himself  at  the  head  of  the  military 
forces  of  the  land,  and  encountered  the  Saracenic  my- 
riads on  the  great  plain  round  Tours.  The  East  and 
West  were  brought  front  to  front — Christianity  and 
Mohammedanism  stood  face  to  face  for  the  first  time ; 
and  it  is  startling  to  consider  for  a  moment  what  the 
result  of  an  Asiatic  victory  might  have  been.  If  ever 
there  was  a  case  in  which  the  intervention  of  Divine 
Providence  may  be  claimed  without  presumption  on  the 
conquering  side,  it  must  be  here,  where  the  truths  ol 
revelation  and  the  progress  of  society  were  dependeni 


*«0  EIGHTH   CENTURY. 

on  the  issue.  The  two  faiths,  according  to  all  human 
calculation,  had  rested  their  supremacy  on  their  respect- 
ive champions.  If  Charles  and  his  Franks  and  Ger- 
mans were  defeated,  there  was  nothing  to  resist  the 
march  of  the  perpetually-increasing  numbers  of  the  Sara- 
cens till  they  had  planted  their  standards  on  the  pinnacles 
of  Eome.  The  first  glow  of  Christian  belief  had  been 
exchanged,  we  have  seen,  for  ambitious  disputes,  or  died 
off  in  many  of  the  practices  of  superstition.  The  very 
man  in  whom  the  Christian  hope  was  placed  was  sus- 
pected of  leaning  to  the  "VYodenism  of  his  IS^orthern  ances- 
tors, and  was  scarcely  bought  over  to  the  defence  of 
the  Church's  faith  by  a  permission  to  pillage  the  Church's 
wealth.  Mohammedanism,  on  the  other  hand,  was  fresh 
and  young.  Its  promises  were  clear  and  tempting — its 
course  triumphant,  and  its  doctrines  satisfactory  equally 
to  the  pride  and  the  indolence  of  the  human  heart.  But 
in  the  former,  though  unperceived  by  the  warriors  at 
Tours  and  the  prelates  at  Eome,  lay  the  germ  of  count- 
less blessings — elevating  the  mind  by  the  discovery  of 
its  strength  at  the  same  moment  in  which  it  is  abased 
by  the  feeling  of  its  weakness,  and  gifted  above  all  with 
the  power  of  expansion  and  universality;  themselves 
proofs  of  its  divine  original,  to  which  no  false  religion 
can  lay  the  slightest  claim.  Cultivate  the  Christian 
mind  to  the  highest — fill  it  with  all  knowledge — ^place 
round  it  the  miracles  of  science  and  art — station  it  in 
ttie  snows  of  Iceland  or  the  heats  of  India — Chris- 
tianity,  like  the  all-girding  horizon  of  the  sky,  widens 
its  circle  so  as  to  include  the  loftiest,  and  contain  within 
its  embrace  the  utmost  diversities  of  human  life  and 
speculation.  But  with  the  Mohammedan,  as  with  other 
impostures,  the  range  is  limited.  When  intellect  expands, 
/u  bursts  the  cerement  in  which  it  has  been  involved; 
and  with  Buddhism,  and  Mithrism,  and  Hindooism,  it 


DEFEAT    OF   THE    SARACENS.  181 

mil  be  as  it  was  with  Druidism,  and  the  more  elegant 
heathendom  of  Greece  and  Eome :  there  will  be  no 
safety  for  them  but  in  the  ignorance  and  barbarism  of 
Iheir  disciples.  On  the  result  of  that  great  day  at  Toure 
in  the  year  732,  therefore,  depended  the  intellectual  im- 
provement and  civil  freedom  of  the  human  race.  Few 
particulars  are  preserved  of  this  momentous  battle;  but 
the  result  showed  that  the  light  cavalry,  in  which  the 
Saracens  excelled,  were  no  match  for  the  firm  line  of 
the  Franks.  When  confusion  once  began  among  the 
swarthy  cavaliers  of  Abderachman,  there  was  no  resto- 
ration possible.  In  wild  confusion  the  melee  was  con- 
tinued; and  all  that  can  be  said  is,  that  the  slaughter  of 
upwards  of  three  hundred  thousand  of  these  impulsive 
pilgrims  of  the  desert  so  weakened  the  Saracenic  power 
in  Europe,  that  in  no  long  time  their  hosts  were  with- 
drawn from  the  soil  of  Gaul,  and  guarded  with  diffi- 
culty the  conquest  they  had  made  behind  the  barrier  of 
the  Pyrenees.  Could  the  gratitude  of  Church  or  State 
be  too  generous  to  the  man  who  preserved  both  from  the 
sword  of  the  destroyer  ?  If  Charles  pillaged  a  monas- 
tery or  seized  the  revenues  of  a  bishopric,  nobody  found 
any  fault.  It  was  almost  just  that  he  should  have  the 
wealth  of  the  cathedral  from  which  he  had  driven  away 
the  mufti  and  muezzin.  But  monasteries  and  bishops 
were  still  powerful,  and  did  not  look  on  the  proceedings 
of  Charles  the  Hammer  with  the  equanimity  of  the 
unconcerned  spectators.  They  perhaps  thought  the 
battle  of  Tours  had  only  given  them  a  choice  of  spoilers, 
instead  of  protection  from  spoliation.  In  a  short  time, 
however,  the  policy  of  the  sagacious  leader  led  him  to 
*ee  the  necessity  of  gaining  over  the  only  united  body 
in  the  State.  He  became  a  benefactor  of  the  Church, 
and  a  staunch  ally  of  the  Eoman  bishop.  Both  had  an 
object  to   obtain.     What  the   phantom    king  was  tc 


Ib2 


EIGHTH   CENTURY. 


Charles,  the  phantom  emperor  was  to  the  Pope.  If 
there  was  unison  between  the  two  dependants,  it  would 
be  easy  to  get  rid  of  the  two  superiors.  Presents  and 
compliments  were  interchanged,  and  moral  support 
trafficked  for  material  aid.  Wherever  the  one  sent 
missionaries  with  the  Cross,  the  other  sent  warriors  to 
their  support.  The  Pontiff  bestowed  on  the  Mayor  the 
keys  of  the  sepulchre  of  St.  Peter,  and  the  title  of  Consul 
and  Patrician,  and  begged  him  to  come  to  his  assistance 
against  Luitprand,  the  Lombard  king.  But  this  was  far 
too  great  an  exploit  to  be  expected  by  a  simple  Bishop, 
and  performed  by  a  simple  Mayor  of  the  Palace.  So 
the  next  great  thing  we  meet  v/ith  in  this  century  is  the 
investiture  of  the  Mayor  with  the  title  of  king,  and  of 
the  Bishop  with  the  sovereignty  of  Rome  and  Itavenna. 
This  happened  in  752.  Pepin  the  Short,  as  he  was  un- 
flatteringly  called  by  his  subjects,  succeeded  Charles  in 
the  government  of  the  Franks.  The  king  was  Childe- 
ric  the  Third,  who  lived  in  complete  seclusion  and 
cherished  his  long  hair  as  the  only  evidence  of  monarchy 
left  to  the  sons  of  Clovis.  Wars  in  various  regions  esta- 
blished the  reputation  of  Pepin  as  the  worthy  successor 
of  Charles;  and  by  a  refinement  of  policy,  the  crown, 
the  consummation  of  all  his  hopes,  was  reached  in  a 
manner  which  deprived  it  of  the  appearance  of  injustice, 
for  it  was  given  to  him  by  the  hands  of  saints  and  popes, 
and  ratified  by  the  council  of  the  nation.  He  had 
already  asked  Pope  Zachariah,  "  who  had  the  best  right 
to  the  name  of  king  ? — he  who  had  merely  the  title,  or 
he  who  had  the  power  ?*  And  in  answer  to  this,  which 
was  rather  a  puzzling  question,  our  countryman  Wini- 
fried,  in  liis  new  character  of  Boniface  and  archbishop, 
placed  upon  his  head  the  golden  round,  and  Might  and 
Right  were  restored  to  their  original  combination.  But 
St.  Boniface  was  not  enough.     In  two  yeai-s  the  Pope 


THE   rCPE   A    SOVEREIGN.  18'd 

himself  clambered  over  the  Alps  and  anointed  the  new 
monarch  with  holy  oil ;  and  by  the  same  act  stripped 
the  long  hair  from  the  head  of  the  Merovingian  puppet, 
and  condemned  him  and  his  descendants  to  the  privacy 
of  a  cloister. 

Now  then  that  Pepin  is  king,  let  Luitprand,  or  any 
other  potentate,  beware  how  he  does  injury  to  the  Pope 
of  Rome.  Twice  the  Frank  armies  are  moved  into 
Italy  in  defence  of  the  Holy  See ;  and  at  last  the  Exarch- 
ate is  torn  from  the  hands  of  its  Lombard  oppressor, 
and  handed  over  in  sovereignty  to  the  Spiritual  Power. 
Eome  itself  is  declared  at  the  same  time  the  property  of 
the  Bishop,  and  free  forever  from  the  suzerainty  of  the 
Emperors  of  the  East.  No  wonder  the  gratitude  of  the 
Popes  has  made  them  call  the  kings  of  France  the  eldest 
sons  of  the  Church.  Their  donations  raised  the  bishop- 
ric to  the  rank  of  a  royal  state;  yet  it  has  been  re- 
marked that  the  generosity  of  the  French  monarchs 
has  always  been  limited  to  the  gift  of  other  people's 
lands.  They  were  extremely  liberal  in  bestowing  large 
tracts  of  country  belonging  to  the  Lombard  kings  or 
the  Byzantine  Caesars;  but  they  kept  a  very  watchful 
eye  on  the  possessions  of  pope  and  bishop  within  their 
own  domain.  They  reserved  to  themselves  the  usufruct 
of  vacant  benefices,  and  the  presentations  to  church  and 
abbey.  At  almost  all  periods,  indeed,  of  their  history, 
they  have  seemed  to  retain  a  very  clear  remembrance 
of  the  position  which  they  held  towards  the  Papacy 
from  the  beginning,  and,  while  encouraging  its  arro- 
gance against  other  principalities  and  powers,  have  held 
a  very  contemptuous  language  towards  it  themselves. 

This,  then,  is  the  great  characteristic  of  the  present 
century,  the  restoration  of  the  monarchical  principle  in 
the  State,  and  its  establishment  in  the  Church.  During 
ftll  these  wretched  centuries,  from  tlie  fall  of  the  Roman 


184 


EIGHTH    CENTURY. 


Empire,  the  progress  has  been  towards  dilfusion  and 
separation.  Kings  rose  up  here  and  there,  but  their 
kingships  were  local,  and,  moreover,  so  recent,  that 
they  were  little  more  than  the  first  officer  or  representa- 
tive of  the  warriors  whose  leaders  they  had  been.  A 
longing  for  some  higher  and  remoter  influence  than  this 
had  taken  possession  of  the  chiefs  of  all  the  early  inva- 
sions, and  we  have  seen  them  (even  while  engaged  in 
wresting  whole  districts  from  the  sway  of  the  old  Eoman 
Empire)  accepting  with  gratitude  the  ensigns  of  Eoman 
authority.  "VYe  have  seen  Gothic  kings  glorying  in  the 
name  of  Senator,  and  Hunnish  savages  pacified  and  con- 
tented by  the  title  of  Prsetor  or  Consul.  The  world 
had  been  accustomed  to  the  oneness  of  Consular  no  less 
than  Imperial  Eome  for  more  than  a  thousand  years  j 
for,  however  the  parties  might  be  divided  at  home,  the 
great  name  of  the  Eternal  City  was  the  sole  sound 
heard  in  foreign  lands.  The  magic  letters,  the  initials 
of  the  Senate  and  People,  had  been  the  ornament  of 
their  banners  from  the  earliest  times,  and  a  division  of 
power  was  an  idea  to  which  the  minds  of  mankind  found 
it  difficult  to  become  accustomed.  It  was  better,  there- 
fore, to  have  only  a  fragment  of  this  immemorial  unity 
than  the  freshness  of  a  new  authority,  however  exten- 
sive or  unquestionable.  Yague  traditions  must  have 
come  down — magnified  by  distance  and  softened  by 
regret — of  the  great  days  before  the  purple  was  torn 
in  two  by  the  transference  of  the  seat  of  power  to  Con- 
stantinople. There  were  nearly  five  hundred  years 
lying  between  the  periods ;  and  all  the  poetic  spirits  of 
the  new  populations  had  cast  longing,  lingering  looks 
behind  at  the  image  of  earthly  supremacy  presented  to 
them  by  the  existence  of  an  acknowledged  master  of 
tbo  world.  A  pedantic  sophist,  speaking  Greek — ^the 
language  of  slaves  and  scholars — wearing  the  loftiest 


DEFENCE    OF   IMAGES. 


183 


titles,  and  yet  hemmed  in  within  the  narrow  limits  of  a 
single  district,  assumed  to  be  the  representative  of  the 
universal  "Lord  of  human  kind,"  and  called  himself 
Emperor  of  the  East  and  West.  The  common  sense 
of  Goth  and  Saxon,  of  Frank  and  Lombard,  rebelled 
against  this  claim,  when  they  saw  it  urged  by  a  person 
unable  to  support  it  by  fleets  and  armies.  When,  in 
addition  to  this  want  of  power,  they  perceived  in  this 
century  a  want  of  orthodox  belief,  or  even  what  they 
considered  an  impious  profanity,  in  the  successor  of 
Augustus  and  Constantine,  they  were  still  more  disin- 
clined to  grant  even  a  titular  supremacy  to  the  Byzan- 
tine ruler.  Leo,  at  that  time  wearing  the  purple,  and 
zealous  for  the  purity  of  the  faith,  issued  an  order  for 
the  destruction  of  the  marble  representations  of  saints 
and  martyrs  which  had  been  used  in  worship;  and 
within  the  limits  of  his  personal  authority  his  mandate 
was  obeyed.  But  when  it  reached  the  West,  a  furious 
opposition  was  made  to  his  command.  The  Pope  stood 
forward  as  champion  of  the  religious  veneration  of 
"storied  urn  and  animated  bust."  The  emperor  was 
branded  with  the  name  of  Iconoclast,  or  the  Image- 
breaker,  and  the  eloquence  of  all  the  monks  in  Europe 
was  let  loose  upon  the  sacrilegious  Caesar.  Interest,  it 
is  to  be  feared,  added  fresh  energy  to  their  conscientious 
denunciations,  for  the  monks  had  attracted  to  them- 
selves a  complete  monopoly  of  the  manufacture  of  these 
aids  to  devotion — and  obedience  to  Leo's  order  would 
have  impoverished  the  monasteries  all  over  the  land. 
A.  Western  emperor,  it  was  at  once  perceived,  would 
not  have  been  so  blind  to  the  uses  of  those  holy  sculp- 
tures, and  soon  an  intense  desire  was  manifested  through- 
out the  Western  nations  for  an  emperor  of  their  own. 
Already  they  were  in  possession  of  a  spiritual  chief, 
who  claimed  the  inheritance  of  the  Prince  of  the  Apoa* 


l86-  EIGHTH   CENTURY. 

ties,  and  looked  down  on  the  Patriarchs  of  Constant!' 
nople  as  bishops  subordinate  to  his  throne.  Why  should 
not  they  also  have  a  temporal  ruler  who  should  renew 
the  old  glories  of  the  vanished  Empire,  and  exercise 
supremacy  over  all  the  governors  of  the  earth  ?  Why, 
indeed,  should  not  the  first  of  those  authorities  exert 
his  more  than  human  powers  in  the  production  of  the 
other  ?  He  had  converted  a  Mayor  of  the  Palace  into 
a  King  of  the  Franks.  Could  he  not  go  a  step  further, 
and  convert  a  King  of  the  Franks  into  an  Emperor  of 
the  West  ?  With  this  hope,  not  yet  perhaps  expressed, 
but  alive  in  the  minds  of  Pepin  and  the^  prelates  of 
France,  no  attempt  was  made  to  check  the  Roman  pon- 
tiffs in  the  extravagance  of  their  pretensions.  Lords 
of  wide  domains,  rich  already  in  the  possession  of  large 
tracts  of  country  and  wealthy  establishments  in  other 
lands,  they  were  raised  above  all  competition  in  rank 
and  influence  with  any  other  ecclesiastic ;  and  relying 
on  spiritual  privileges,  and  their  exemption  from  active 
enmity,  they  were  more  powerful  than  many  of  the 
greatest  princes  of  the  time.  Everywhere  the  mystic 
dignity  of  their  office  was  dwelt  upon  by  their  sup- 
porters. For  a  long  time,  as  we  have  seen,  their  om- 
nipotence was  acknowledged  by  the  two  classes  who 
saw  in  the  use  of  that  spiritual  dominion  a  counterpoise 
to  the  worldly  sceptres  by  which  they  were  crushed. 
But  now  the  worldly  sceptres  came  to  the  support  of  the 
spiritual  dominion.  Its  limit  was  enlarged,  and  made  to 
include  the  regulation  of  all  human  affairs.  It  was  its 
office  to  subdue  kings  and  bind  nobles  in  links  of 
iron ;  and  when  the  son  of  Pepin,  Charles,  justly 
called  the  Great,  though  travestied  by  French  vanity 
jito  the  name  of  Charlemagne,  sat  on  the  throne  of 
the  Franks,  and  carried  his  arms  and  influence  into  the 
remotest  States,  it  was  felt  that  the  hour  and  the  man 


TENDENCY  TO   IMPERIALISM. 


18? 


were  come;  and  the  Western  Empire  was  formally  re« 
newed. 

The  curious  thing  is,  that  this  longing  for  a  restora- 
tion  of  the  Eoman  Empire,  and  dwelling  on  its  useful- 
ness and  grandeur,  were  dominant,  and  productive  of 
great  events,  in  populations  which  had  no  drop  of 
Eoman  blood  in  their  veins.  The  last  emperor  resident 
in  Home  had  never  heard  the  names  of  the  hordes  of 
savages  whose  descendants  had  now  seized  the  plains 
of  France  and  Italy.  Yet  it  seemed  as  if,  with  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  Eoman  Empire,  they  had  inherited  its 
traditions  and  hopes.  They  might  be  Saxons,  or  Franks, 
)r  Burgundians,  or  Lombards,  by  national  descent,  but 
by  residence  they  were  Eomans  as  compared  with  the 
Greeks  in  the  East, — and  by  religion  they  were  Eomans 
as  compared  with  the  Sclaves  and  Saracens,  who  pressed 
on  them  on  the  North  and  South.  It  would  not  be  diffi- 
cult in  this  country  to  find  the  grandchildren  of  French 
refugees  boasting  with  patriotic  pride  of  the  English 
triumphs  at  Cressy  and  Agincourt — or  the  sons  of 
Scottish  parents  rejoicing  in  their  ancestors'  victory 
under  Cromwell  at  Dunbar;  and  here,  in  the  eighth 
century,  the  descendants  of  Alaric  and  Clovis  were 
patriotically  loyal  to  the  memory  of  the  old  Empire, 
and  were  reminded  by  the  victories  of  Charlemagne  of 
the  trophies  of  Scipio  and  Marius.  These  victories, 
indeed,  were  not,  as  is  so  often  found  to  be  the  case,  the 
mere  efforts  of  genius  and  ambition,  with  no  higher 
object  than  to  augment  the  conqueror's  power  or  repu- 
tation. They  were  systematically  pursued  with  a  view 
to  an  end.  In  one  advancing  tide,  all  things  tended  to 
the  Imperial  throne.  Whatever  nation  felt  the  force  of 
Charlemagne's  sword  felt  also  a  portion  of  its  humilia- 
tion lightened  when  its  submission  was  perceived  to  bo 
only  ar.  advancement  towards  the  restoration  of  the  old 


188  EIGHTH   CENTURY. 

dominion.  It  might  have  been  degrading  to  acknow 
ledge  the  superiority  of  the  son  of  Pepin — but  who 
could  offer  resistance  to  the  successor  of  Augustus? 
So,  after  thirty  years  of  uninterrupted  war,  with  cam- 
paigns succeeding  each  in  the  most  distant  regions,  and 
all  crowned  with  conquest;  after  subduing  the  Saxons 
beyond  the  Weser,  the  Lombards  as  far  as  Treviso,  the 
Arabs  under  the  walls  of  Saragossa,  the  Bavarians  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Augsburg,  the  Sclaves  on  the 
Elbe  and  Oder,  the  Huns  and  Avars  on  the  Raab  and 
Danube,  and  the  Greeks  themselves  on  the  coast  of  Dal- 
matia;  when  he  looked  around  and  saw  no  rebellion 
against  his  authority,  but  throughout  the  greater  part 
of  his  domains  a  willing  submission  to  the  centralizing 
power  which  rallied  all  Christian  states  for  the  defence 
of  Christianity,  and  all  civilized  nations  for  the  defence 
of  civilization, — nothing  more  was  required  than  the 
mere  expression  in  definite  words  of  the  great  thing 
that  had  already  taken  place,  and  Charlemagne,  at  the 
extreme  end  of  this  century,  bent  before  the  successor 
of  St.  Peter  at  Eome,  and  stood  up  crowned  Emperor 
of  the  West,  and  champion  and  chief  of  Christendom. 
The  period  of  Charlemagne  is  a  great  date  in  history; 
f,n«  0-, ,  for  it  is  the  le^al  and  formal  termination  of 

A.D.  786-814.  .  °  ^  .  -r 

an  antiquated  state  of  society.  It  was  also 
the  introduction  to  another,  totally  distinct  from  itself 
and  from  its  predecessor.  It  was  not  barbarism ;  it  was 
not  feudalism;  but  it  was  the  bridge  which  united  the 
uwo.  By  barbarism  is  meant  the  uneasy  state  of  govern- 
ments and  peoples,  where  the  tribe  still  predominated 
over  the  nation;  where  the  Frank  or  Lombard  con- 
tinued an  encamped  warrior,  without  reference  to  the 
soil;  and  where  his  patriotism  consisted  in  fidelity  to 
the  traditions  of  his  descent,  and  not  to  the  greatness  or 
independence  of  the  land  he  occupied.    In  the  reign  of 


CONDITION    OF   THE    EMPIRE. 


189 


Charlemagne,  the  land  of  the  Frank  became  practically^ 
and  even  territorially,  France ;  the  district  occupied  by 
the  Lombards  became  Lombardy.  The  feeling  of  pro- 
perty in  the  soil  was  added  to  the  ties  of  raqp  and 
kindred ;  and  at  the  very  time  that  all  the  nations  of 
the  Invasion  yielded  to  the  supremacy  of  one  man  as 
emperor,  the  different  populations  asserted  their  sepa- 
rate independence  of  each  other,  as  distinct  and  self- 
sufficing  kingdoms — kingdoms,  that  is  to  say,  without 
the  kings,  but  in  all  respects  prepared  for  those  indi- 
vidualized expressions  of  their  national  life.  For  though 
Charlemagne,  seated  in  his  great  hall  at  Aix-la-Chapelle, 
gave  laws  to  the  whole  of  his  vast  domains,  in  each 
country  he  had  assumed  to  himself  nothing  more  than 
the  monarchic  power.  To  the  whole  empire  he  was 
emperor,  but  to  each  separate  people,  such  as  Franks 
and  Lombards,  he  was  simply  king.  Under  him  there 
were  dukes,  counts,  viscounts,  and  other  dignitaries,  but 
each  limited,  in  function  and  influence,  to  the  territory 
to  which  he  belonged.  A  French  duke  had  no  pre- 
eminence in  Lombardy,  and  a  Bavarian  graf  had  no 
rank  in  Italy.  Other  machinery  was  at  times  employed 
by  the  central  power,  in  the  shape  of  temporary  mes- 
sengers,  or  even  of  emissaries  with  a  longer  tenure  of 
office;  but  these  persons  were  sent  for  some  special  pur- 
pose,  and  were  more  like  commissioners  appointed  by 
the  Crown,  than  possessors  of  authority  inherent  in  them- 
selves. The  term  of  their  ambassadorship  expired,  their 
salary,  or  the  lands  they  had  provisionally  held  in  lieu 
of  salary,  reverted  to  the  monarch,  and  they  returned 
to  court  with  no  further  pretension  to  power  or  influence 
than  an  ambassador  in  our  days  when  he  returns  from  the 
country  to  which  he  is  accredited.  But  when  the  great 
local  nobility  found  their  authority  indissolubly  con- 
nected with  their  possessions,  and  that  ducal  or  princely 


i90  EIGHTH   CENTURY. 

privileges  were  hereditary  accompanimeuts  of  their 
lands,  the  foundations  of  modern  feudalism  were  already- 
laid,  and  the  path  to  national  kingship  made  easy  and 
unavoidable.  When  Charlemagne's  empire  broke  into 
pieces  at  his  death,  we  still  find,  in  the  next  century, 
that  each  piece  was  a  kingdom.  Modern  Europe  took 
its  rise  from  these  fragmentary  though  complete  por- 
tions ;  and  whereas  the  breaking-up  of  the  first  empire 
left  the  world  a  prey  to  barbaric  hordes,  and  desolation 
and  misery  spread  over  the  fairest  lands,  the  disruption 
of  the  latter  empire  of  Charlemagne  left  Europe  united 
as  one  whole  against  Saracen  and  savage,  but  separated 
in  itself  into  many  well-defined  states,  regulated  in 
their  intercourse  by  international  law,  and  listening 
with  the  docility  of  children  to  the  promises  or  threaten- 
ings  of  the  Father  of  the  Universal  Church.  For  with 
the  empire  of  Charlemagne  the  empire  of  the  Papacy 
had  grown.  The  temporal  power  was  a  collection  of 
forces  dependent  on  the  life  of  one  man;  the  spiritual 
power  is  a  principle  which  is  independent  of  individual 
aid.  So  over  the  fragments,  as  we  have  said,  of  the 
broken  empire,  rose  higher  than  ever  the  unshaken 
majesty  of  Eome.  Civil  authority  had  shrunk  up  within 
local  bounds;  but  the  Papacy  had  expanded  beyond  the 
limits  of  time  and  space,  and  shook  the  dreadful  keys 
and  clenched  the  two-edged  sword  which  typified  its 
dominion  over  both  earth  and  heaven. 


NINTH  CENTURY. 


iSmpctors* 

A.D. 

West. 

A.D. 

East, 

800. 

Charlemagne,  (crowned 

NiCEPHORUs — {cent.) 

by  the  Pope.) 

811. 

Michael. 

814. 

Louis  the  Debonnaire. 

813. 

Leo  the  Armenian. 

840. 

Charles  the  Bald. 

821. 

Mich  AKL  the  Stammerkb. 

877. 

Louis  the  Stammerer. 

829. 

Theophilus. 

879. 

Louis   III.   and  Carlo- 

842. 

Michael  III. 

man. 

886. 

Leo  the  Philosopheb. 

884. 

Charles  the  Fat.      n 

887. 

Arnold. 

899. 

Louis  IV. 

iS:ing0  of  dFrance. 

887.  EuDEs,  (Count  of  Paris.)    898.  Charles  the  Simple. 

itmgis  ef  IBnfllantr. 

827.  Egbert.  860.  Ethelbert. 

837.  Ethelwolf.  866.  Ethelred. 

857.  Ethelbald.  872.  Alfred  the  Great. 


John  Scotus,  (Erigena,)   Hincmar,  Heric,  (preceded    Doo 
Cartes  in  philosophical  investigation,)  Macarius. 


THE  NINTH  CENTUEY. 

DISMEMBERMENT  OP  CHARLEMAGNE'S  EMPIRE-  DANISH  IN- 
VASION OP  ENGLAND — WEAKNESS  OP  FRANCE — ^REIGN  Of 
ALFRED. 

The  first  year  of  this  century  found  Charlemagne 
with  the  crown  of  the  old  Empire  upon  his  head,  and 
the  most  distant  parts  of  the  world  filled  with  his  repu- 
tation. As  in  the  case  of  the  first  Napoleon,  we  find 
his  antechambers  crowded  with  the  fallen  rulers  of  the 
conquered  territories,  and  even  with  sovereigns  of  neigh- 
bouring countries.  Among  others,  two  of  our  Anglo- 
Saxon  princes  found  their  way  to  the  great  man's  court 
at  Aix-la-Chapelle.  Eardulf  of  Northumberland  pleaded 
his  cause  so  well  with  Charlemagne  and  the  Pope,  that 
by  their  good  offices  he  was  restored  to  his  states.  But 
a  greater  man  than  Eardulf  was  also  a  visitor  and  careful 
student  of  the  vanquisher  and  lawgiver  of  the  Western 
world.  Originally  a  Prince  of  Kent,  he  had  been  ex- 
pelled by  the  superior  power  or  arts  of  Eeortrick,  Eling 
of  the  West  Saxons,  and  had  betaken  himself  for  pro- 
tection, if  not  for  restoration,  to  the  most  powerful  ruler 
of  the  time.  Whether  Egbert  joined  in  his  expeditions 
or  shared  his  councils,  we  do  not  know,  but  the  history 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  monarchies  at  this  date  (800  to  830) 
shows  us  the  exact  counterpart,  on  our  own  island,  of 
the  actions  of  Charlemagne  on  the  wider  stage  of  conti- 
nental Europe.  Egbert,  on  the  death  of  Beortrick,  ob- 
tained possession  of  Wessex,  and  one  by  one  the  sepa- 
rate states  of  the  British  Heptarchy  were   subdued; 

9  19.1 


i94  NINTH  CENTURY. 

Bome  reduced  to  entire  subjection,  others  only  to  sub- 
ordinate rank  and  the  payment  of  tribute,  till,  when  alJ 
things  were  prepared  for  the  change,  Egbert  proclaimed 
the  unity  of  Southern  Britain  by  assuming  the  title  of 
Bretwalda,  in  the  same  way  as  his  prototype  had  re 
stored  the  unity  of  the  empire  by  taking  the  dignity  of 
Emperor.  It  is  pleasant  to  pause  over  the  period  of 
Charlemagne's  reign,  for  it  is  an  isthmus  connecting  two 
dark  and  unsatisfactory  states  of  society, — »i  past  of 
disunion,  barbarity,  and  violence,  and  a  future  of  igno 
ranee,  selfishness,  and  crime.  The  present  was  not, 
indeed,  exempt  from  some  or  all  of  these  characteristics. 
There  must  have  been  quarrellings  and  brutal  animosities 
on  the  outskirts  of  his  domain,  where  half-converted 
Franks  carried  fire  and  sword,  in  the  name  of  religion, 
among  the  still  heathen  Saxons;  there  must  have  been 
insolence  and  cruelty  among  the  bishops  and  priests, 
whose  education,  in  the  majority  of  instances,  was 
limited  to  learning  the  services  of  the  Church  by  heart. 
Many  laymen,  indeed,  had  seized  on  the  temporalities 
of  the  sees ;  and,  in  return,  many  bishops  had  arrogated 
to  themselves  the  warlike  privileges  and  authority  of 
the  counts  and  viscounts.  But  within  the  radius  of 
Charlemagne's  own  influence,  in  his  family  apartments, 
or  in  the  great  Hall  of  Audience  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  the 
astonishing  sight  was  presented  of  a  man  refreshing  him- 
self, after  the  fatigues  of  policy  and  war,  by  converting  his 
house  into  a  college  for  the  advancement  of  learning 
and  science.  From  all  quarters  came  the  scholars,  and 
grammarians,  and  philosophers  of  the  time.  Chief  of 
these  was  our  countryman,  the  Anglo-Saxon  monk 
Alcuin,  and  from  what  remains  of  his  writings  we  can 
only  regret  that,  in  the  infancy  of  that  new  civilization, 
his  genius,  which  was  undoubtedly  great,  was  devoted 
to  trifles  of  no  real  importance.     Others  came  to  fill  up 


chaelemaqne's  court.  195 

that  noble  company ;  and  it  is  surely  a  great  relief  from 
the  bloody  records  with  which  we  have  so  long  been 
familiar,  to  see  Charlemagne  at  home,  surrounded  by 
eons  and  daughters,  listening  to  readings  and  translations 
fi*om  Eoman  authors;  entering  himself  into  disquisi- 
tions on  philosophy  and  antiquities,  and  acting  as  presi- 
dent of  a  select  society  of  earnest  searchers  after  infor- 
mation. To  put  his  companions  more  at  their  ease,  he 
hid  the  terrors  of  his  crown  under  an  assumed  name, 
and  only  accepted  so  much  of  his  royal  state  as  his 
fi^ends  assigned  to  him  by  giving  him  the  name  of  King 
David.  The  best  versifier  was  known  as  Yirgil.  Alcuin 
himself  was  Horace;  and  Angelbert,  who  cultivated 
Greek,  assumed  the  proud  name  of  Homer.  These 
literary  discussions,  however,  would  have  had  no  better 
effect  than  refining  the  court,  and  making  the  days  pass 
pleasantly;  but  Charlemagne's  object  was  higher  and 
more  liberal  than  this.  Whatever  monastery  he  founded 
or  endowed  was  forced  to  maintain  a  school  as  part  of 
its  establishment.  Alcuin  was  presented  with  the  great 
Abbey  of  St.  Martin  of  Tours,  which  possessed  on  its 
domain  twenty  thousand  serfs,  and  therefore  made  him 
one  of  the  richest  land-owners  in  France.  There,  at  full 
leisure  from  worldly  cares,  he  composed  a  vast  number 
of  books,  of  very  poor  philosophy  and  very  incorrect 
astronomy,  and  perhaps  looked  down  from  his  lofty 
eminence  of  wealth  and  fame  on  the  humble  labours  of 
young  Eginhart,  the  secretary  of  Charlemagne,  who  has 
left  us  a  Life  of  his  master,  infinitely  more  interesting 
and  useful  than  all  the  dissertations  of  the  sage.  From 
this  great  Life  we  learn  many  delightful  characteristics 
of  the  great  man,  his  good-heartedness,  his  love  of  jus- 
tice, and  blind  affection  for  his  children.  But  it  is  with 
his  public  works,  as  acting  on  this  century,  that  we  have 
now  to  do.     Throughout  the  whole  extent  of  his  empire 


196  NINTH   CENTURY. 

he  founded  Academies,  both  for  learning  and  for  useful 
occupations.  He  encouraged  the  study  and  practice  of 
agriculture  and  trade.  The  fine  arts  found  him  a  munifi- 
cent patron;  and  though  the  objects  on  which  the  artist's 
skill  was  exercised  were  not  more  exalted  than  the 
carving  of  wooden  tables,  the  moulding  of  metal  cups, 
and  the  casting  of  bells,  the  circumstances  of  the  time 
are  to  be  taken  into  consideration,  and  these  eflbrts  may 
be  found  as  advanced,  for  the  ninth  century,  as  the 
works  of  the  sculptors  and  metallurgists  of  our  own 
day.  It  is  painful  to  observe  that  the  practice  of  what 
is  now  called  adulteration  was  not  unknown  at  that 
early  period.  There  was  a  monk  of  the  name  of  Tancho, 
in  the  monastery  of  St.  Gall,  who  produced  the  first  bell. 
Its  sound  was  so  sweet  and  solemn,  that  it  was  at  once 
adopted  as  an  indispensable  portion  of  the  ornament  of 
church  and  chapel,  and  soon  after  that,  of  the  religious 
services  themselves.  Charlemagne,  hearing  it,  and  per- 
haps believing  that  an  increased  value  in  the  metal 
would  produce  a  richer  tone,  sent  him  a  sufficient 
quantity  of  silver  to  form  a  second  bell.  The  monk, 
tempted  by  the  facility  of  turning  the  treasure  to  his 
own  use,  brought  forward  another  specimen  of  his  skill, 
but  of  a  mixed  and  very  inferior  material.  What  the 
just  and  severe  emperor  might  have  done,  on  the  dis- 
covery of  the  fraud,  is  not  known ;  but  the  story  ended 
tragically  without  the  intervention  of  the  legal  sword 
At  the  first  swing  of  the  clapper  it  broke  the  skull  of 
the  dishonest  founder,  who  had  apparently  gone  too 
near  to  witness  the  action  of  the  tongue ;  and  the  bell 
was  thenceforth  looked  on  with  veneration,  as  the 
discoverer  and  punisher  of  the  unjust  manufacturer. 

The  monks,  indeed,  seem  to  have  been  the  most  re- 
fractory of  subjects,  perhaps  because  they  were  already 
axempted  from  the  ordinary  punishments.    In  order  to 


PSALMODY.  197 

produce  uniformity  in  the  services  and  chants  of  tho 
Church,  the  emperor  sent  to  Eome  for  twelve  monkish 
musicians,  and  distributed  them  in  the  twelve  principal 
bishoprics  of  his  dominions.  The  twelve  musicians 
would  not  consent  to  be  musical  according  to  order,  and 
made  the  confusion  greater  than  ever,  for  each  of  them 
taught  different  tunes  and  a  different  method.  The  dis- 
appointed emperor  could  only  complain  to  tho  Pope,  and 
the  Pope  put  the  recusant  psalmodists  in  prison.  But  it 
appears  the  fate  of  Charlemagne,  as  of  all  persons  in 
advance  of  their  age,  to  bo  worthy  of  congratulation 
only  for  his  attempts.  The  success  of  many  of  his 
undertakings  was  not  adequate  to  the  pains  bestowed 
upon  them.  lie  held  many  assemblages,  both  lay  and 
ecclesiastical,  during  his  lengthened  reign;  he  published 
many  excellent  laws,  which  soon  fell  into  disuse;  he 
tried  many  reforms  of  churches  and  monasteries,  which 
sharQd  the  same  fortune ;  he  held  the  Popes  of  Eome 
and  the  dignitaries  of  his  empire  in  perfect  submission, 
but  professed  so  much  respect  for  the  office  of  Pontiff 
and  Bishop,  that,  when  his  own  overwhelming  supe- 
riority was  withdrawn,  the  Church  rebelled  against  the 
State,  and  claimed  dominion  over  it.  His  sense  of  jus- 
tice, as  well  as  the  custom  of  the  time,  led  him  to  divide 
his  states  among  his  sons,  which  not  only  insured  enmity 
between  them,  but  enfeebled  the  whole  of  Christendom. 
Clouds,  indeed,  began  to  gather  over  him  some  time 
before  his  reign  was  ended.  One  day  he  was  at  a  city 
of  Narbonese  Gaul,  looking  out  upon  the  Mediterranean 
Sea.  He  saw  some  vessels  appear  before  the  port 
"These,"  said  the  courtiers,  "must  be  ships  from  the 
coast  of  Africa,  Jewish  merchantmen,  or  British  traders.'* 
But  Charlemagne,  who  had  leaned  a  long  time  against 
the  wall  of  the  room  in  a  passion  of  tears,  said,  "  No ! 
these  are  not  tho  ships  of  commerce ;  I  know  by  theii 


(98 


NINTH   CENTURY. 


lightness  of  movement.  They  are  the  galleys  of  the 
Norsemen;  and,  though  I  know  such  miserable  pirates 
can  do  me  no  harm,  I  cannot  help  weeping  when  I  think 
of  the  miseries  they  will  inflict  on  my  descendants  and 
the  lands  they  shall  rule."  A  true  speech,  and  just  occa- 
sion for  grief,  for  the  descents  of  these  Scandinavian 
rovers  are  the  great  characteristic  of  this  century,  by 
which  a  new  power  was  introduced  into  Europe,  and 
great  changes  took  place  in  the  career  of  France  and 
England. 

It  would  perhaps  be  more  correct  to  say  that,  by  this 
new  mixture  of  race  and  language,  France  and  England 
were  called  into  existence.  England,  up  to  this  date, 
had  been  a  collection  of  contending  states;  France,  a 
tributary  portion  of  a  great  Germanic  empire.  Slowly 
stretching  northward,  the  Eoman  language,  modified, 
of  course,  by  local  pronunciation,  had  pushed  its  way 
among  the  original  Franks.  Latin  had  been  for  many 
years  the  language  of  Divine  Service,  and  of  history, 
and  of  law.  All  westward  of  the  Ehine  had  yielded  to 
these  influences,  and  the  old  Teutonic  tongue  which 
Clovis  had  brought  with  him  from  Germany  had  long 
disappeared,  from  the  Alps  up  to  the  Channel.  When 
the  death  of  Charlemagne,  in  814,  had  relaxed 
'  the  hold  which  held  all  his  subordinate  states 
together,  the  diversity  of  the  language  of  Frenchman 
and  German  pointed  out,  almost  as  clearly  as  geographi- 
cal boundaries  could  have  done,  the  limits  of  the  re- 
spective nations.  From  henceforward,  identity  of  speech 
was  to  be  considered  a  more  enduring  bond  of  union 
than  the  mere  inhabiting  of  the  same  soil.  But  other 
circ  imstances  occurred  to  favour  the  idea  of  a  separa- 
tion into  well-defined  communities;  and  among  these 
the  principal  was  a  very  long  experience  of  the  disad- 
vantages of  an  encumbered  and  too  extensive  empire 


LOUIS  THE  DEBONNAIRE. 


199 


Even  while  the  sword  was  held  by  the  strong  hand  of 
Charlemagne,  each  portion  of  his  dominions  saw  with 
dissatisfaction  that  it  depended  for  its  peace  and  pros- 
perity on  the  peace  and  prosperity  of  all  the  rest,  and 
yet  in  this  peace  and  prosperity  it  had  neither  voice  nor 
influence.  The  inhabitants  of  the  banks  of  the  Loire 
were,  therefore,  naturally  discontented  when  they  found 
their  provisions  enhanced  in  price,  and  their  sons  called 
to  arms,  on  account  of  disturbances  on  the  Elbe,  or  hos- 
tilities in  the  south  of  Italy.  These  evils  of  their  posi- 
tion were  further  increased  when,  towards  the  end  of 
Charlemagne's  reign,  the  outer  circuit  of  enemies  became 
more  combined  and  powerful.  In  proportion  as  he  had 
extended  his  dominion,  he  had  come  into  contact  with 
tribes  and  states  with  whom  it  was  impossible  to  be  on 
friendly  terms.  To  the  East,  he  touched  upon  the  irre- 
claimable Sclaves  and  Avars — in  the  South,  he  came  on 
the  settlements  of  the  Italian  Greeks — in  Spain,  he 
rested  upon  the  Saracens  of  Cordova.  It  was  hard  for 
the  secure  centre  of  the  empire  to  be  destroyed  and 
ruined  by  the  struggles  of  the  frontier  populations,  with 
which  it  had  no  more  sympathy  in  blood  and  language 
than  with  the  people  with  whom  they  fought.  Already, 
also,  we  have  seen  how  local  their  government  had 
become.  They  had  their  own  dukes  and  counts,  their 
own  bishops  and  priests  to  refer  to.  The  empire  was,  in 
fact,  a  name,  and  the  land  they  inhabited  the  only 
reality  with  which  they  were  concerned.  We  shall  not 
be  surprised,  therefore,  when  we  find  that  universal  re- 
bellion took  place  when  Louis  the  Debonnaire,  the  just 
and  saint-like  successor  of  Charlemagne,  endeavoured 
to  carry  on  his  father's  system.  Even  his  reforms  served 
only  to  show  his  own  unselfishness,  and  to  irritate  the 
grasping  and  avaricious  offenders  whom  it  was  his  object 
to  amend.    Bishops  were  stripped  of  their  lay  lordships 


200 


NINTH    CENTURY. 


— ^provented  from  wearing  sword  and  arms,  and  evei: 
deprived  of  tlie  military  ornament  of  glittering  spurs  to 
their  heels.  The  monks  and  nuns,  who  had  almost  uni- 
versally fallen  into  evil  courses,  were  forcibly  reformed 
by  the  laws  of  a  second  St.  Benedict,  whose  regulations 
were  harsh  towards  the  regular  orders,  but  useless  to 
the  community  at  large — a  sad  contrast  to  the  agricul- 
tural and  manly  exhortations  of  the  first  conventual 
legislator  of  that  name.  JSTothing  turned  out  well  with 
this  simplest  and  most  generous  of  the  Carlovingian 
kings.  His  virtues,  inextricably  interlaced  as  they 
were  with  the  weaknesses  of  his  character,  were  more 
injurious  to  himself  and  his  kingdom  than  less  amiable 
qualities  would  have  been.  Priest  and  noble  were  equally 
ignorant  of  the  real  characteristics  of  a  Christian  life. 
"When  he  refunded  the  exactions  of  his  father,  and  re- 
stored the  conquests  which  he  considered  illegally  ac- 
quired, the  universal  feeling  of  astonishment  was  only 
lost  in  the  stronger  sentiment  of  disdain.  An  excellent 
monk  in  a  cell,  or  judge  in  a  court  of  law,  Louis  the 
Debonnaire  was  the  most  unfit  man  of  his  time  to  keep 
discordant  nationalities  in  awe.  His  children  were  as 
unnatural  as  those  of  Lear,  whom  he  resembled  in  some 
other  respects :  for  he  found  what  little  reverence  waits 
upon  a  discrowned  king;  and  personal  indignities  of  the 
most  degrading  kind  were  heaped  upon  him  by  those 
whose  duty  it  was  to  maintain  and  honour  him.  Super- 
stition was  set  to  work  on  his  enfeebled  mind,  and  twice 
he  did  public  penance  for  crimes  of  which  he  was  not 
guilty ;  and  on  the  last  occasion,  stripped  of  his  military 
baldric — the  lowest  indignity  to  which  a  Frankish  mon- 
arch could  be  subjected — clothed  in  a  hair  shirt  by  the 
hands  of  an  ungrateful  bishop,  he  was  led  by  his  tri- 
umphant son,  Lothaire,  through  the  streets  of 
*  Aix-la-Chapelle.      But  natural  feeling  was  nol 


DEATH   OF  LOUIS.  201 

extinguished  in  the  hearts  of  the  staring  populace 
They  saw  in  the  meek  emperor's  lowly  behaviour,  and 
patient  endurance  of  pain  and  insult,  an  image  of  that 
other  and  holier  King  who  carried  his  cross  up  the 
steeps  of  Jerusalem.  They  saw  him  denuded  of  tho 
symbols  of  earthly  power  and  of  military  rank,  op- 
pressed and  wronged — and  recognised  in  that  down- 
trodden man  a  representation  of  themselves.  This  senti- 
ment spread  with  the  magic  force  of  sympathy  and  re- 
morse. All  the  vc'orld,  we  are  told,  left  the  unnatui-al 
son  solitary  and  friendless  in  the  very  houi'  of  his  suc- 
cess; and  Louis,  too  pure-minded  himself  to  perceive 
that  it  was  the  virtue  of  his  character  which  made  him 
hated,  persisted  in  pushing  on  his  amendments  as  if  he 
had  the  power  to  carry  them  into  effect.  He  ordered  all 
lands  and  other  goods  which  the  nobles  had  seized  from 
the  Church  to  be  restored — a  tenderness  of  conscience 
utterly  inexplicable  to  the  marauding  baron,  who  had 
succeeded  by  open  force,  and  in  a  fair  field,  in  despoiling 
the  marauding  bishop  of  land  and  tower.  It  was  arming 
his  rival,  he  thought,  with  a  two-edged  sword,  this 
silence  as  to  the  inroads  of  the  churchman  on  the  pro- 
perty of  the  nobles,  and  prevention  of  their  just  reprisals 
on  the  property  of  the  prelate,  by  jjlacing  it  under  the 
safeguard  of  religion.  Tho  rugged  warrior  kept  firm 
hold  of  the  bishopric  or  abbey  he  had  secured,  and  the 
belted  bishop  reimbursed  himself  by  appropriating  the 
wealth  of  his  weaker  neighbours. 

But  Louis  was  as  unfortunate  in  his  testamentary 
arrangement  as  in  all  the  other  regulations  of  his  life. 
Lothaire  was  to  retain  the  eastern  portion  of  the  empire ; 
Charles,  his  favourite,  had  France  as  far  as  the  Ehine ; 
while  Louis  was  limited  to  the  distant  region  of  Bavaria. 
E  840  "^^^  having  made  this  disposition  of  his  power, 
the  meek  and  useless  Louis  descended  into  the 


202 


NINTH   CENTURY. 


toiab — a  striking  example,  the  French  historians  teD 
us,  of  the  great  historic  truth  renewed  at  such  distant 
dates,  that  the  villanies  and  cruelties  of  a  race  of  kings 
bring  misery  on  the  most  virtuous  of  their  descendants. 
All  the  crimes  of  the  three  preceding  reigns — ^the  violence 
and  disregard  of  life  exhibited  by  Charlemagne  himself 
— found  their  victim  and  expiation  in  his  meek  and 
gentle-minded  son.  The  harshness  of  Henry  YIII.  of 
England,  they  add,  and  the  despotic  claims  of  James, 
were  visited  on  the  personally  just  and  amiable  Charles; 
and  they  point  to  the  parallel  case  of  their  own  Louis 
XYI.,  and  see  in  the  sad  fortune  of  that  mild  and  guile- 
less sovereign  the  final  doom  of  the  murderous  Charles 
IX.,  and  the  voluptuous  and  hypocritical  Louis  XIY. 
But  these  kings  are  still  far  off  in  the  darkness  of  the 
coming  centuries.  It  is  a  strange  sight,  in  the  middle 
of  the  ninth  century,  to  see  the  successor  of  the  great 
Emperor  stealing  through  the  confused  and  chaotic 
events  of  that  wretched  period,  stripped  as  it  were  of 
sword  and  crown,  but  everywhere  displaying  the  beauty 
of  pure  and  simple  goodness.  He  refused  to  condemn 
his  enemies  to  death.  He  was  only  inexorable  towards 
his  own  offences,  and  sometimes  humbled  himself  for 
imaginary  sins.  A  protector  of  the  Church,  a  zealous 
supporter  of  Eome,  it  would  give  additional  dignity  to 
the  act  of  canonization  if  the  name  of  Louis  the  Lebon- 
naire  were  added  to  the  list  of  Saints. 

But  we  have  left  the  empire  which  it  had  taken  so 
long  to  consolidate,  now  legally  divided  into  three. 
There  is  a  Charles  in  possession  of  the  western  division ; 
.1  Louis  in  the  farther  Germany ;  and  Lothaire,  the  un- 
filial  triumpher  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  invested  with  the 
remainder  of  the  Eoman  world.  But  Lothaire  was  not 
to  be  satisfied  with  remainders.  Once  in  power,  he  was 
\lotermined  to  recover  the  empire  in  its  undivided  state 


FRANCE   LOSES   THE   RHINE.  203 

He  was  King  of  Italy;  master  of  Eome  and  of  the 
Pope;  he  was  eldest  grandson  of  Charlemagne,  and 
A  D  842  ^®^®^  ^^®  opposition  of  his  brothers.  A  battle 
was  fought  at  Fontenay  in  842,  in  which  these 
pretensions  were  overthrown ;  and  the  final  severance 
took  place  in  the  following  year  between  the  French 
and  German  populations.  The  treaty  between  the 
brothers  still  remains.  It  is  written  in  duplicate — one 
in  a  tongue  still  intelligible  to  German  ears,  and  the 
other  in  a  Eomanized  speech,  which  is  nearer  the  French 
of  the  present  day  than  the  English  of  Alfred,  or  even 
of  Edward  the  Confessor,  is  to  ours. 

France,  which  had  hitherto  attained  that  title  in  right 
of  its  predominant  race,  held  it  henceforth  on 
the  double  ground  of  language  and  territory. 
But  there  is  a  curious  circumstance  connected  with  the 
partition  of  the  empire,  which  it  may  be  interesting  to 
remember.  France,  in  gaining  its  name  and  language, 
lost  its  natural  boundary  of  the  Ehine.  Up  to  this  time, 
the  limit  of  ancient  Gaul  had  continued  to  define  the 
territory  of  the  Western  Franks.  In  rude  times,  indeed, 
there  can  be  no  other  divisions  than  those  supplied  by 
nature ;  but  now  that  a  tongue  was  considered  a  bond 
of  nationality,  the  French  were  contented  to  surrender 
to  Lothaire  the  Emperor  a  long  strip  of  territory, 
running  the  whole  way  up  from  Italy  to  the  North  Sea, 
including  both  banks  of  the  Ehine,  and  acting  as  a  wall 
of  partition  between  them  and  the  German-speaking 
people  on  the  other  side, — a  great  price  to  pay,  even  for 
the  easiest  and  most  widely-spread  language  in  Europe. 
Yet  the  most  ambitious  of  Frenchmen  would  pause 
before  he  undid  the  bargain  and  reacquired  the  "  exult- 
ing and  abounding  river''  at  the  sacrifice  of  his  inimitable 
tongne. 
Very  confused  and  uncertain  are  all  the  events  for  a 


204  NINTH   CENTURY. 

long  time  after  this  date.  We  see  perpetual  attempts 
made  to  restore  the  reality  as  well  as  the  name  of  the 
Empire.  These  battles  and  competitions  of  the  line  of 
Charlemagne  are  the  subject  of  chronicles  and  treaties, 
and  might  impose  upon  us  by  the  grandeur  of  their  ap- 
pearance, if  we  did  not  see,  from  the  incidental  facts 
which  come  to  the  surface,  how  unavailing  all  efforts 
must  be  to  arrest  the  dissociation  of  state  from  state. 
The  principle  of  dissolution  was  at  work  everywhere. 
Kingship  itself  had  fallen  into  contempt,  for  the  great 
proprietors  had  been  encouraged  to  exert  a  kind  of  per- 
sonal power  in  the  reign  of  Charlemagne,  which  con- 
tributed to  the  strength  of  his  well-consolidated  crown ; 
but  when  the  same  individual  influence  was  exercised 
under  the  nominal  supremacy  of  Louis  the  Debonnaire 
or  Charles  the  Bald,  it  proved  a  humiliating  and  danger- 
ous contrast  to  the  weakness  of  the  throne.  A  combi- 
nation of  provincial  dignitaries  could  at  any  time  out- 
weigh the  authority  of  the  king,  and  sometimes,  even 
singly,  the  owners  of  extensive  estates  threw  off  the 
very  name  of  subject.  They  claimed  their  lands  as  not 
only  hereditary  possessions,  but  endowed  with  all  the 
rights  and  privileges  which  their  personal  offices  had 
bestowed.  If  their  commission  from  the  emperor  had 
given  them  authority  to  judge  causes,  to  raise  taxes,  or 
to  collect  troops,  they  maintained  from  henceforth  that 
those  high  powers  were  inherent  in  their  lands.  The 
dukes,  therefore,  invested  their  estates  with  ducal 
rights,  independent  of  the  Crown,  and  left  to  the  holder 
of  the  kingly  name  no  real  authority  except  in  his  own 
domains.  Brittany,  and  Aquitaine,  and  Septimania, 
withdrew  their  allegiance  from  the  poor  King  of  Franco. 
He  could  not  compel  the  ambitious  owners  of  those 
duchies  to  recognise  his  power,  and  condescended  even 
to  treat  them  as  rival  and  acknowledged  kings.     Then 


FORGED   DONATIONS.  20& 

there  were  other  magnates  who  were  not  to  be  left  mere 
Bubjects  when  dukes  had  risen  to  such  rank.  So  the 
Marquises  of  Toulouse  and  Gothia,  a  district  of  Langue- 
doc,  and  Auvergne,  were  treated  more  as  equals  than  as 
appointed  deputies  recallable  at  pleasure.  But  worse 
enemies  of  kingly  dignity  than  duke  or  marquis  were 
the  ambitious  bishops,  who  looked  with  uneasy  eyes  on 
the  rapid  rise  of  their  rivals  the  lay  nobility.  Already 
the  hereditary  title  of  those  territorial  potentates  was  an 
accomplished  fact ;  the  son  of  the  count  inherited  his 
father's  county.  But  the  general  celibacy  of  the  clergy 
fortunately  prevented  the  hereditary  transmission  of 
bishopric  and  abbey.  To  make  up  for  the  want  of  this 
advantage,  they  boldly  determined  to  assert  far  higher 
claims  as  inherent  in  their  rank  than  marquis  or  count 
could  aim  at.  Starting  from  the  universally-conceded 
ground  of  their  right  to  reprimand  and  punish  any 
Christian  who  committed  sin,  they  logically  cari'ied 
their  pretension  to  the  right  of  deposing  kings  if  they 
offended  the  Church.  More  than  fifty  years  had  passed 
since  Charlemagne  had  received  the  imperial  crown  from 
the  hands  of  the  Pope  of  Eome.  Dates  are  liable  to  fall 
into  confusion  in  ignorant  times  and  places,  and  it  was 
easy  to  spread  a  belief  that  the  popes  had  always  ex- 
ercised the  power  of  bestowing  the  diadem  upon  kings. 
To  support  these  astounding  claims  with  some  certain 
guarantee,  and  give  them  the  advantage  of  prescriptive 
right  by  a  long  and  legitimate  possession,  certain  docu- 
ments were  spread  abroad  at  this  time,  purporting  to  be 
a  collection  by  Isidore,  a  saint  of  the  sixth  century,  of 
the  decretals  or  judicial  sentences  of  the  popes  from  a 
7ery  early  period,  asserting  the  unquestioned  spiritual 
supremacy  of  the  Eoman  See  at  a  date  when  it  was  in 
reality  but  one  of  many  feeble  seats  of  Christian  author- 
Ity ;  and  to  equalize  its  earthly  grandeur  with  its  re- 


2^^  NINTH   CENTURY. 

ligious  pretension,  the  new  edition  of  Isidore  contained 
a  donation  by  Constantine  himself,  in  the  beginning  of 
the  fourth  century,  of  the  city  of  Eome  and  enormous 
territories  in  Italy,  to  be  held  in  sovereignty  by  the 
successors  of  St.  Peter.  These  are  now  universally 
acknowledged  to  be  forgeries  and  impostures  of  the 
grossest  kind,  but  at  the  time  they  appeared  they  served 
the  purpose  for  which  they  were  intended,  and  gave  a 
sanction  to  the  Papal  assumptions  far  superior  to  the 
rights  of  any  existing  crown. 

Charles  the  Bald  was  a  true  son  of  Louis  the  Debon- 
-^„  naire  in  his  devotion  to  the  Church.     When  the 

A.D.  859. 

bishops  of  his  own  kingdom,  with  "Wenilon  of 
Sens  as  their  leader,  offended  with  some  remissness  he 
had  temporarily  shown  in  advancing  their  worldly  in- 
terests, determined  to  depose  him  from  the  throne,  and 
called  Louis  the  German  to  take  his  place,  Charles  fled 
and  threw  himself  on  the  protection  of  the  Pope.  And 
when  by  submission  and  promises  he  had  been  permitted 
to  re-enter  France,  he  complained  of  the  conduct  of  the 
prelates  in  language  which  ratified  all  their  claims. 
"  Elected  by  Wenilon  and  the  other  bishops,  as  well  as 
by  the  lieges  of  our  kingdom,  who  expressed  their  con- 
sent by  their  acclamations,  Wenilon  consecrated  mo 
kiog  according  to  ecclesiastic  tradition,  in  his  own  dio- 
cese, in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Cross  at  Orleans.  He 
anointed  me  with  the  holy  oil ;  he  gave  me  the  diadem 
and  royal  sceptre,  and  seated  me  on  the  throne.  After 
that  consecration  I  could  not  be  removed  from  the 
throne,  or  supplanted  by  any  one,  at  least  without  being 
heard  and  judged  by  the  bishops,  by  whose  ministry  I 
waj}  consecrated  king.  It  is  they  who  are  as  the  thrones 
of  the  Divinity.  God  reposes  upon  them,  and  by  them 
he  gives  forth  his  judgments.  At  all  times  I  have  been 
ready  to  submit  to  their  fatherly  corrections,  to  theii 


BELIEF   AND   INQUIRY.  207 

just  castigations,  and  am  ready  to  do  so  still."  What 
more  could  the  Church  require?  Its  wealth  was  the 
least  of  its  advantages,  though  the  abbacies  and  bishop- 
rics were  richer  than  dukedoms  all  over  the  land.  Their 
temporal  power  was  supported  by  the  terrors  of  their 
spiritual  authority ;  and  kings,  princes,  and  people  ap«. 
peared  so  prone  to  the  grossest  excesses  of  credulity  and 
gnperstition,  that  it  needed  little  to  throw  Europe  itself 
at  the  feet  of  the  priesthood,  and  place  sword  and  sceptre 
permanently  in  subordination  to  the  crozier.  Blindly 
secure  of  their  position,  rioting  in  the  riches  of  the  sub- 
ject land,  the  bishops  probably  disregarded,  as  below 
their  notice,  the  two  antagonistic  principles  which  were 
at  work  at  this  time  in  the  midst  of  their  own  body — 
the  principle  of  absolute  submission  to  authority  in 
articles  of  faith,  and  the  principle  of  free  inquiry  into  all 
religious  doctrine.  The  first  gave  birth  to  the  great 
mystery  of  transubstantiation,  which  now  first  made  its 
appearance  as  an  indispensable  belief,  and  was  hailed  by 
the  laity  and  inferior  clergy  as  a  crowning  proof  of  the 
miraculous  powers  inherent  in  the  Church.  The  second 
was  equally  busy,  but  was  not  productive  of  such  per- 
manent effects.  At  the  court  of  Charles  the  Bald  there 
was  a  society  of  learned  and  ingenious  men,  presided 
over  by  the  celebrated  John  Scot  Erigena,  (or  native  of 
Ireland,)  who  had  studied  the  early  Fathers  and  the 
Platonic  philosophy,  and  were  inclined  to  admit  human 
reason  to  some  participation  in  the  reception  of  Chris- 
tian truths.  There  were  therefore  discussions  on  the 
real  presence,  and  free-will,  and  predestination,  which 
nad  the  usual  unsatisfactory  termination  of  all  questions 
rranscending  man's  understanding,  and  only  embittered 
their  respective  adherents  without  advancing  the  settle- 
ment on  either  side.  While  these  exercitations  of  talent 
and  dialectic  quickness  were  carried  on,  filling  the  different 


208 


NINTH   CENTURY. 


dioceses  with  wonder  and  pei-plexity,  the  great  body  of 
the  people  in  various  countries  of  Europe  were  recalled 
to  the  practical  business  of  life  by  disputes  of  a  far  more 
serious  character  than  the  wordy  wars  of  Scotus  and  his 
foes.  Michelet,  the  most  picturesque  of  the  recent  his- 
torians of  France,  has  given  us  an  amazing  view  of  the 
state  of  affairs  at  this  time.  It  is  the  darkest  period 
of  the  human  mind ;  it  is  also  the  most  unsettled  period 
of  human  society.  Outside  of  the  narrowing  limits  of 
peopled  Christendom,  enemies  are  pressing  upon  every 
side.  Saxons  on  the  East  are  laying  their  hands  in 
reverence  on  the  manes  of  horses,  and  swearing  in  the 
name  of  Odin;  Saracens,  in  the  South  and  "West,  art 
gathering  once  more  for  the  triumph  of  the  Prophet, 
and  suddenly  France,  Germany,  Italy,  and  England,  are 
awakened  to  the  presence  and  possible  supremacy  of  a 
more  dreaded  invader  than  either,  for  the  Yikinger,  or 
Norsemen,  were  abroad  upon  the  sea,  and  all  Christen- 
dom was  exposed  to  their  ravages.  Wherever  a  river 
poured  its  waters  into  the  ocean,  on  the  coast  of  Nar- 
bonne,  or  Yorkshire,  or  Calabria,  or  Friesland,  boats, 
small  in  size,  but  countless  in  number,  penetrated  into 
the  inland  towns,  and  disembarked  wild  and  fearless 
warriors,  who  seemed  inspired  by  the  mad  fanaticism 
of  some  inhuman  faith,  which  made  charity  and  mercy 
a  sin.  Starting  from  the  islands  and  rugged  mainland 
of  the  present  Denmark  and  Norway,  they  swept  across 
the  stormy  North  Sea,  shouting  their  hideous  songs  of 
glory  and  defiance,  and  springing  to  land  when  they 
reached  their  destination  with  the  agility  and  blood- 
thirstiness  of  famished  wolves.  Their  business  was  to 
?arry  slaughter  and  destruction  wherever  they  went 
They  looked  with  contempt  on  the  lazy  occupations  of 
the  inhabitants  of  town  or  farm,  and,  above  all,  wera 
filled  with  hatred  and  disdain  of  the  monks  and  piiosts 


THE  NORSEMEN.  209 

Their  leaders  were  warriors  and  poets.  Gliding  up 
noiseless  streams,  they  intoned  their  battle-cry  and 
shouted  the  great  deeds  of  their  ancestors  when  they 
reached  the  walls  of  some  secluded  monastery,  and 
rejoiced  in  wrapping  all  its  terrified  inmates  in  flames. 
Bards,  soldiers,  pirates,  buccaneers,  and  heathens,  desti- 
tute of  fear,  or  pity,  or  remorse,  amorous  of  danger, 
and  skilful  in  management  of  ship  and  weapon,  these 
were  the  most  ferocious  visitants  which  Southern  Europe 
had  ever  seen.  No  storm  was  sufficient  to  be  a  protec- 
tion against  their  approach.  On  the  crest  of  the  highest 
waves  those  frail  barks  were  seen  by  the  affrighted 
dwellers  on  the  shore,  careering  with  all  sail  set,  and 
steering  right  into  their  port.  All  the  people  on  the 
coast,  from  the  Ehine  to  Bayonne,  and  from  Toulouse 
to  the  Grecian  Isles,  :fled  for  protection  to  the  great  pro- 
prietors of  the  lands.  But  the  great  proprietors  of  the 
lands  were  the  peaceful  priors  of  stately  abbeys,  and 
bishops  of  wealthy  sees.  Their  pretensions  had  been 
submitted  to  by  kings  and  nobles ;  they  were  the  real 
rulers  of  France ;  and  even  in  England  their  authority 
was  very  great.  Excommunications  had  been  their 
arms  against  recusant  baron  and  refractoiy  count;  but 
the  Danish  Northmen  did  not  care  for  bell,  book,  and 
candle.  The  courtly  circle  of  scholars  and  divines  could 
give  no  aid  to  the  dishoused  villagers  and  trembling 
cities,  however  ingenious  the  logic  might  be  which  re- 
conciled Plato  to  St.  Paul ;  and  Charles  the  Bald,  sur- 
prised, no  doubt,  at  the  inefficacy  of  prayers  and  proces- 
sions, was  forced  to  replace  the  influence  in  the  hands, 
not  which  carried  the  crozier  and  cross,  but  which 
curbed  the  horse  and  couched  the  spear.  The  invasion 
vf  the  Danes  was,  in  fact,  the  resuscitation  of  the  courage 
and  manliness  of  the  nationalities  they  attacked.  Dread- 
ful as  the  suffering  was  at  the  time,  it  was  not  given  to 


210  KINTH   CENTT:ET. 

any  man  then  alive  to  see  the  future  beLefits  contained 
in  the  present  woe.  We,  with  a  calmer  view,  look  back 
upon  the  whole  series  of  those  events,  and  in  the  inter 
mixture  of  the  new  race  perceive  the  elements  of  great 
ness  and  power.  Priest-ridden,  down-trodden  popula- 
tions received  a  fresh  impulse  from  those  untamed 
children  of  the  North ;  and  in  the  forcible  relegation  of 
ecclesiastics  to  the  more  peaceable  oflGlces  of  their  calling, 
we  see  the  first  beginning  of  the  gradation  of  ranks,  and 
separation  of  employments,  which  gave  hono'irable  oc- 
cupation to  the  respective  leaders  in  Church  and  State ; 
which  limited  the  clergyman  to  the  unostentatious  dis- 
charge of  his  professional  duties,  and  left  the  baron  to 
command  his  warriors  and  give  armed  protection  to  all 
the  dwellers  in  the  land.  For  feudalism,  as  understood 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  was  the  inevitable  result  of  the  re- 
lative positions  of  priest  and  noble  at  the  time  of  the 
Norsemen's  forays.  It  was  found  that  the  possession 
of  great  domains  had  its  duties  as  well  as  its  rights,  and 
the  duty  of  defence  was  the  most  imperative  of  all. 
Men  held  their  grounds,  therefore,  on  the  obligation  of 
keeping  their  vassals  uninjured  by  the  pirates;  the 
bishops  were  found  unable  to  perform  this  work,  and  the 
territory  passed  away  from  their  keeping.  Yast  estates, 
no  doubt,  still  remained  in  theii-  possession,  but  they 
were  placed  in  the  guardianship  of  the  neighbouring 
chateaux;  and  though  at  intervals,  in  the  succeeding 
centuries,  we  shall  see  the  prelate  dressing  himself  in  a 
coat  of  mail,  and  rendering  in  person  the  military  ser- 
vice entailed  upon  his  lands,  the  public  feeling  rapidly 
revolted  against  the  incongruity  of  the  deed.  The  steel- 
clad  bishop  was  looked  on  with  slender  respect,  and  was 
Boon  found  to  do  more  damage  to  his  order,  by  the  con- 
trast between  his  conduct  and  his  profession,  than  ho 
oould  possibly  gain  for  it  by  his  prowess  or  skill  in  war 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   FEUDA  .ISM.  211 

Feudalism,  indeed,  or  the  reciprocal  obligation  of  pro- 
tection and  submission,  reached  its  full  development  by 
the  formal  deposition  of  a  descendant  of  Charlemagne, 
on  the  express  ground  of  his  inability  to  defend  his 
people  from  the  enemies  by  which  they  were 
surrounded.  A  congress  of  six  archbishops,  and 
seventeen  bishops,  was  held  in  the  town  of  Mantela,  near 
Vienne ;  and  after  consultation  with  the  nobility,  they 
came  to  the  following  resolution : — "  That  whereas  the 
great  qualities  of  the  old  mayors  of  the  palace  were 
their  only  rights  to  the  throne,  and  Charlemagne, 
whom  all  willingly  obeyed,  did  not  transmit  his  talents, 
along  with  his  crown,  to  his  posterity,  it  was  right  to 
leave  that  house."  They  therefore  sent  an  offer  of  the 
throne  of  Burgundy  to  Boso,  Count  of  the  Ardennes, 
with  the  conditions  "  that  he  should  be  a  true  patron 
and  defender  of  high  and  low,  accessible  and  friendly  to 
all,  humble  before  God,  liberal  to  the  Church,  and  true 
to  his  word." 

By  this  abnegation  of  temporal  weapons,  and  depend- 
ence on  the  armed  warrior  for  their  defence,  the  pre- 
lates put  themselves  at  the  head  of  the  unarmed  peoples 
at  the  same  moment  that  they  exercised  their  spiritual 
authority  over  all  classes  alUfi.  It  was  useless  for  them 
to  draw  the  sword  themselves,  when  they  regulated 
every  motion  of  the  hand  by  which  the  sword  was  held. 
While  this  is  the  state  of  affairs  on  the  Continent — 
while  the  great  Empire  of  Charlemagne  is  falling  to 
pieces,  and  the  kingly  office  is  practically  reduced  to  a 
mere  equality  with  the  other  dignities  of  the  land — while 
this  disunion  in  nations  and  weakness  in  sovereigns  is 
exposing  the  fairest  lands  in  Europe  to  the  aggressions 
of  enemies  on  every  side — let  us  cast  our  eyes  for  a 
moment  on  England,  and  see  in  what  condition  our 
ancestors  are  placed  at  the  middle  of  this  century.     A 


il2  NINTH   CENTURY. 

most  dreadful  and  alarming  condition  as  ever  Old  Englanci 
was  in.  For  many  years  before  this,  a  pirate's  boat  or 
two  from  the  l^orth  would  run  upon  the  sand,  and  send 
the  crews  to  bum  and  rob  a  village  on  the  coast  of  Ber- 
wick or  Northumberland.  Pirates  we  superciliously 
call  them,  but  that  is  from  a  misconception  of  their 
point  of  honour,  and  of  the  very  different  estimate  they 
themselves  formed  of  their  pursuits  and  character.  They 
were  gentleman,  perhaps,  "  of  small  estate'^  in  some  out- 
lying district  of  Denmark  or  Norway,  but  endowed 
with  stout  arms  and  a  great  wish  to  distinguish  them- 
selves— if  the  distinction  could  be  accompanied  with  an 
increase  of  their  worldly  goods.  They  considered  the 
sea  their  own  domain,  and  whatever  was  found  on  it  as 
theirs  by  right  of  ])ossession.  They  were,  therefore, 
lords  of  the  manor,  looking  after  their  rights,  their 
waifs  and  strays,  their  flotsams  and  jetsams.  They 
were  also  persons  of  a  strong  religious  turn,  and  united 
the  spirit  of  the  missionary  to  the  courage  of  the  warrior 
and  the  avidity  of  the  conqueror.  Odin  was  still  their 
god,  the  doors  of  the  Walhalla  were  still  open  to  them 
after  death,  and  the  skulls  of  their  enemies  were  foam- 
ing with  intoxicating  mead.  The  English  were  rene- 
gades from  the  true  faith,  a  set  of  drivelling  wretches 
who  believed  in  a  heaven  where  there  was  no  beer,  and 
worshipped  a  god  who  bade  them  pray  for  their  enemies 
and  bless  the  very  people  who  used  them  ill.  The  re- 
maining similarity  in  the  language  of  the  two  peoples 
must  have  added  a  bitterness  to  the  contemptuous  feel- 
ings of  the  unreclaimed  rovers  of  the  deep ;  and  pro- 
bably, on  their  return,  these  enterprising  warriors  were 
as  proud  of  the  number  of  priests  they  had  slain,  as  of 
the  more  valuable  trophies  they  carried  home.  Den- 
mark itself,  up  to  this  time,  had  been  distracted  with 
internal  wars,     It  was  only  the  more  active  spirits  who 


DANISH   INVASION   OF   ENGLAND. 


218 


had  rushed  across  from  the  Sound,  and  solaced  them- 
Belves,  in  the  intervals  of  their  own  campaigns,  with  an 
onslaught  upon  an  English  town.  But  now  the  scene 
was  to  change.  The  inroads  of  separate  crews  were  to 
be  exchanged  for  national  invasions.  Harold  of 
'  the  Fair  Hair  was  seated  on  an  undisputed  throne, 
and  repressed  the  outrages  of  these  adventurous  warriors 
by  a  strong  and  determined  will.  Ho  stretched  his 
sceptre  over  all  the  Scandinavian  world,  and  neither  the 
North  Sea  nor  the  Baltic  were  safe  places  for  piracy 
and  spoil.  One  of  his  countrymen  had  founded  the  royal 
line  of  Eussia,  and  from  his  capital  of  Kieff  or  Novgorod 
was  civilizing,  with  whip  and  battle-axe,  the  original 
hordes  which  now  form  the  Empire  of  the  Czars.  Al- 
ready, from  their  lurking-places  on  the  shores  of  the 
Black  Sea,  the  Norwegian  predecessors  of  the  men  of 
Odessa  and  Sebastopol  were  threatening  a  dash  upon 
Constantinople;  while  sea-kings  and  jarls,  compelled  to 
be  quiet  and  peaceable  at  home,  but  backed  by  all  the 
wild  populations  of  the  North,  anxious  for  glory,  and 
greedy  of  gold  and  corn,  resolved  to  reduce  England 
to  their  obedience,  and  collected  an  enormous  fleet  in  the 
quiet  recesses  of  the  Baltic,  withdrawn  from  the  obser- 
vation of  Harold.  It  seems  fated  that  France  is  always, 
in  some  sort  or  other,  to  set  the  fashion  to  her  neighbours. 
We  have  seen,  at  the  beginning  of  this  century,  how 
England  followed  the  example  of  the  Prankish  peoples 
in  consolidating  itself  into  one  dominion.  Charlemagne 
was  recognised  chief  potentate  of  many  states,  and 
Egbert  was  sovereign  of  all  the  Saxon  lands,  from  Corn- 
wall to  the  gates  of  Edinburgh.  But  the  model  was 
copied  no  less  closely  in  the  splitting-up  of  the  central 
authority  than  in  its  consolidation.  While  Louis  tho 
Debonnaire  and  Charles  the  Bald  were  weakening  the 
throne  of  Charlemagne,  the  states  of  Egbert  became 


-^^  NINTH   CENTURY. 

parcelled  out  in  the  same  way  between  the  descendants 
of  the  English  king.  Ethelwolf  was  the  counterpart  of 
Louis,  and  earned  the  sceptre  in  too  gentle  a  hand.  He 
Btill  further  diminished  his  authority  by  yielding  to  the 
dissensions  of  his  court.  Like  the  Frankish  ruler,  also, 
he  left  portions  of  his  territory  to  his  four  sons;  of 
whom  it  will  be  sufficient  for  us  to  remember  that  the 
youngest  was  the  great  Alfred — the  foremost  name  in 
all  mediajval  history;  and  by  an  injudicious  marriage 
with  the  daughter  of  Charles  the  Bald,  and  his  unjust 
divorce  of  the  mother  of  all  his  sons,  he  offended  the 
feelings  of  the  nation,  and  raised  the  animosity  of  his 
children.  Ethclbald  his  son  completed  the  popular  dis- 
content by  marrying  his  father's  widow,  the  French 
princess,  who  had  been  the  cause  of  so  much  disagree- 
ment; and  while  the  people  were  thus  alienated,  and  the 
guiding  hand  of  a  true  ruler  of  men  was  withdrawn, 
„„„  the  terrible  invasion  of  Danes  and  Jutlanders 

A.D.  839. 

went  on.  They  sailed  up  the  Thames  and  pil- 
laged London.  "Winchester  was  given  to  the  flames. 
The  whole  isle  of  Thanet  was  seized  and  permanently 
occupied.  The  magic  standard,  a  raven,  embroidered 
by  the  daughters  of  the  famous  Regner  Lodbrog,  (who 
had  been  stung  to  death  by  serpents  in  a  dungeon  into 
which  he  was  thrown  by  Ella,  King  of  Northumberland,) 
was  carried  from  point  to  point,  and  was  thought  to  be 
the  symbol  of  victory  and  revenge.  The  offending 
Northumbrian  now  felt  the  wrath  of  the  sons  of  Lod- 
brog. They  landed  with  a  great  army,  and  after  a 
battle,  in  which  the  chiefs  of  the  English  were  slain, 
took  the  Northumbrian  kingdom.  Nottingham  was 
soon  after  captured  and  destroyed.  It  was  no  longer  a 
mere  incursion.  The  nobles  and  great  families  of  Den- 
mark came  over  to  their  new  conquest,  and  stationed 
themselves  in  strong  fortresses,  commanding  large  cir 


ALFRED   AND  THE   DANES.  -1^ 

clc8  of  country,  and  lived  under  their  Danish  regula- 
tions. The  land,  to  bo  sure,  was  not  populous  at  that 
time,  and  probably  the  Danish  settlements  were  accom- 
plished without  the  removal  of  any  original  occupiers. 
But  the  castles  they  built,  and  the  towns  which  rapidly 
grew  around  them,  acted  as  outposts  against  the  remain- 
ing British  kingdoms;  and  at  last,  when  fleet  after  fleet 
disembarked  their  thousands  of  warlike  colonists 
*  — ^when  Leicester,  Lincoln,  Stamford,  York,  and 
Chester,  were  all  in  Danish  hands,  and  stretched  a  line 
of  intrenchments  round  the  lands  they  considered  their 
own — the  divided  Anglo-Saxons  were  glad  to  purchase  a 
cessation  of  hostilities  by  guaranteeing  to  them  forever 
the  places  and  territories  they  had  secured.  And  there 
was  now  a  Danish  kingdom  enclosed  by  the  fragments 
of  the  English  empire;  there  were  Danish  laws  and 
customs,  a  Danish  mode  of  pronunciation,  and  for  a 
good  while  a  still  broader  gulf  of  demarcation  established 
between  the  peoples  by  their  diversity  in  religious 
faith.  But  when  Alfred  attained  the  supreme 
pokier — and  although  respecting  the  treaties  between 
the  Danes  and  English,  yet  evidently  able  to  defend  his 
countrymen  from  the  aggressions  of  their  foreign  neigh- 
bour— the  pacified  pirate,  tired  of  the  sea,  and  softened 
by  the  richer  soil  and  milder  climate  of  his  new  home, 
began  to  perceive  the  very  unsatisfactory  nature  of  hib 
ancient  belief,  and  rapidly  gave  his  adhesion  to  the 
lessons  of  the  gospel.  Guthrum,  the  Danish  chieftain, 
became  a  zealous  Christian  according  to  his  lights,  and 
was  baptized  with  all  his  subjects.  Alfred  acted  as  god- 
father  to  the  neophyte,  and  restrained  the  wildest  of  his 
followers  within  due  bounds.  Perhaps,  even,  he  was 
waisted  by  his  Christianized  allies  in  the  great  and  final 
irtrugglo  against  Hastings  and  a  new  swarm  of  Scandi- 
navian rovers,  whose  defeat  is  the  concluding  act  of  thia 


216 


NINTH   CENTURY. 


tumultuous  century.  Alfred  drew  up  near  London,  and 
met  the  advancing  hosts  on  the  banks  of  the  river  Lea, 
about  twenty  miles  from  town.  The  patient  angler  in 
that  suburban  river  seldom  thinks  what  great  events 
occurred  upon  its  shore.  Great  ships — all  things  are 
comparative — were  floating  upon  its  waters,  filled  with 
armed  Danes.  Alfred  cut  certain  openings  in  the  banks 
and  lowered  the  stream,  so  that  the  hostile  navy  stranded. 
Out  sprang  the  Danes,  astonished  at  the  interruption  to 
their  course,  and  retreated  across  the  country,  nor 
stopped  till  they  had  placed  themselves  in  inaccessible 
positions  on  the  Severn.  But  the  century  came  to  a 
close.  Opening  with  the  great  days  of  Charlemagne,  it 
is  right  that  it  should  close  with  the  far  more  glorious 
reign  of  Alfred  the  patriot  and  sage; — a  century  illumi- 
nated at  its  two  extremes,  but  in  its  middle  period  dark 
with  disunion  and  ignorance,  and  not  unlikely,  unless 
controlled  to  higher  uses,  to  give  birth  to  a  state  of  more 
hopeless  barbarism  than  that  from  which  the  nations  of 
Europe  had  so  recently  emerged. 


TENTH  CENTURY. 


iEmperors  of  ©ecmang. 

A.D. 

Louis  IV. — [conL) 
911.  Conrad. 
920.  Henry  the  Fowler. 
936.  Otho  the  Great. 
973.  Otho  II. 
983.  Otho  III. 


itings  of  dFrance, 

Charles  the  Simple.- 
{cont.) 
923.  EoDOLPH. 


iSmperors  of  tje  iHajsJt. 

A.D. 

Leo. — {cont.) 
911.  Constantine  IX. 
915.  Constantine  and  Romands 
959.  RoMANus  II. 
963.  NiCEPHORUs  Phocas. 
969.  John  Zimisces. 
975.  Basilius  and  Constan- 
tine X. 

Htngsi  of  iSnglanti. 

Alfred. — {coni.) 
901.  Edward  the  Elder. 
925.  Athelstane. 


936.  Louis  IV.,  (d'Outremer.)  941.  Edmund  I. 

954.  Lothaire.  948.  Eldred. 

986.  Louis  V.,  (le  Faineant.)  955.  Edwy. 

987.  Hugh  Capet,  (new  dy-  959.  Edgar. 

nasty.)  976.  Edward  II. 

996.  Robert  the  Wise.  978.  Ethelred  II. 

Euliiors. 

SuiDAS;  (Lexicographer),  Gerbert,  Odo,  Dunstaj*. 


10 


THE  TENTH  CENTURY. 

DARKNESS    AND   DEriPAIB. 

The  tenth  century  is  always  to  be  i^membered  as  the 
darkest  and  most  debased  of  all  the  periods  of  modem 
history.  It  was  the  midnight  of  the  human  mind,  far 
out  of  reach  of  the  faint  evening  twilight  left  by  Eoman 
culture,  and  further  still  from  the  morning  brightness  of 
the  new  and  higher  civilization.  If  we  try  to  catch  any 
hope  of  the  future,  we  must  turn  from  the  oppressed 
and  enervated  populations  of  France  and  Italy  to  the 
wild  wanderers  from  the  North.  By  following  the 
latter  detachment  of  Norsemen  who  made  their  settle- 
ments on  the  Seine,  we  shall  see  that  what  seemed  the* 
wedge  by  which  the  compactness  of  an  organized  king- 
dom was  to  be  split  up  turned  out  to  be  the  strengthen- 
ing beam  by  which  the  whole  machinery  of  legal  go- 
vernment had  been  kept  together.  Eomanized  Gauls, 
effeminated  Franks,  Goths,  and  Burgundians,  were  found 
unfitted  for  the  duties  either  of  subjects  or  rulers.  Thej^ 
were  too  ambitious  to  obey,  and  too  ignorant  to  com- 
mand. Eeligion  itself  had  lost  its  efficacy,  for  the  popu- 
lations had  been  so  fed  with  false  legends,  that  they  had 
no  relish  for  the  truths  of  the  gospel,  which,  indeed,  as 
an  instrument  of  instruction,  had  fallen  into  complete 
disuse.  Ship-loads  of  false  relics,  and  army-rolls  of 
imaginary  samts,  were  poured  out  for  the  general  vene- 
ration. The  higher  dignitaries  of  the  Church  were 
looked  on  with  very  different  feelings,  according  to  the 
point  of  view  taken  of  them      When  regarded  merely 

219 


220  TENTH   CENTURY. 

as  possessors  of  lands  and  houses,  they  were  loved  oi 
hated  according  to  the  use  they  made  of  their  power; 
but  at  the  very  time  when  cruelties  and  vices  made  them 
personally  the  objects  of  detestation  or  contempt,  the 
sacredness  of  their  official  characters  remained.  Peti- 
tions were  sent  to  the  kings  against  the  prelates  being 
allowed  to  lead  their  retainers  into  battle,  not  entirely 
from  a  scruple  as  to  the  unlawfulness  of  such  a  proceed- 
inff.  but  from  the  more  serious  consideration  that  their 
death  or  capture  would  be  taken  as  a  sign  of  the  venge- 
ance of  Heaven,  and  damp  the  ardour  of  the  party  they 
supported.  Churches  and  cathedrals  were  filled  with 
processionary  spectacles,  and  their  altars  covered  with 
the  offerings  of  the  faithful;  and  yet  so  brutal  were  the 
manners  of  the  times,  and  so  small  the  respect  enter- 
tained for  the  individual  priest,  that  laymen  of  the 
highest  rank  thought  nothing  of  knocking  down  the 
dignitaries  of  the  Church  with  a  blow  on  the  head,  even 
while  solemnly  engaged  in  the  offices  of  devotion.  The 
Eoman  pontiffs,  we  have  seen,  did  not  scruple  to  avail 
themselves  of  the  forgeries  of  their  enthusiastic  sup- 
porters to  establish  their  authority  on  the  basis  of  anti- 
quity, and  at  the  middle  of  this  century  we  should  find, 
if  we  inquired  into  it,  that  the  sacred  city  and  chair  of 
St.  Peter  were  a  prey  to  the  most  violent  passions. 
Many  devout  Eoman  Catholics  have  been,  at  various 
periods,  so  horrified  with  the  condition  of  their  chiefs, 
and  of  the  perverted  religion  which  had  arisen  from 
tradition  and  imposture,  that  they  have  claimed  the 
mere  continued  existence  of  the  Papacy  as  a  proof  of 
its  Divine  institution,  and  a  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy 
that  "  the  gates  of  hell  should  not  prevail  against  it." 
Yet  even  in  the  midst  of  this  corruption  and  ignorance, 
there  were  not  wanting  some  redeeming  qualities,  which 
soften  our  feelings  towards  the  ecclesiastic  power.     Tt 


CONVENTS. 


221 


was  at  all  times,  in  its  theory,  a  protest  against  the 
excesses  of  mere  strength  and  violence.  The  doctrines 
it  professed  to  teach  were  those  of  kindness  and  charity  3 
and  in  the  great  idea  of  the  throned  fisherman  at  Eome, 
the  poorest  saw  a  kingdom  which  was  not  of  this  world, 
and  yet  to  which  all  the  kingdoms  of  this  world  must 
bow.  Temporal  ranks  were  obliterated  when  the  de- 
scendants of  kings  and  emperors  were  seen  paying 
homage  to  the  sons  of  serfs  and  T^orkmen.  The  immu- 
nity, also,  from  spoil  and  slaughter,  which  to  a  certain 
extent  still  adhered  to  episcopal  and  abbatial  lands,  re- 
flected a  portion  of  their  sanctity  on  the  person  of  the 
bishop  and  abbot.  Mysterious  reverence  still  hung 
round  the  convents,  within  which  such  ceaseless  prayers 
were  said  and  so  many  relics  exposed,  and  whither  it 
was  also  known  that  all  the  learning  and  scholarship  of 
the  land  had  fled  for  refuge.  The  doles  at  monastery- 
doors,  however  objected  to  by  political  economists,  as 
encouragements  of  mendicancy  and  idleness,  were  viewed 
in  a  very  different  light  by  the  starving  crowds,  who, 
besides  being  qualified  by  destitution  and  hunger  for  the 
reception  of  charitable  food,  had  an  incontestable  right, 
under  the  founder's  will,  to  be  supported  by  the  establish- 
ment on  whose  lands  they  lived.  The  abbot  who  neg- 
lected tofeed  the  poor  was  not  only  an  unchristian  con- 
temner of  the  precepts  of  the  faith,  but  ran  counter  to  the 
legal  obligations  of  his  place.  He  was  administrator  of 
certain  properties  left  for  the  benefit  of  persons  about 
whose  claims  there  was  no  doubt ;  and  when  the  rapa- 
cious methods  of  maintaining  their  adherents,  which 
wore  adopted  by  the  count  and  baron,  were  compared 
with  the  baskets  of  broken  victuals,  and  the  jugs  of 
foaming  beer,  which  were  distributed  at  the  buttery  of 
the  abbey,  the  decision  was  greatly  in  favour  of  the 
Bpi ritual  chief     His  ambling  mule,  and  swift  hound,  and 


222 


TENTH   CENTURY. 


hooded  hawks,  were  not  grudged,  nor  his  loss  deiensible 
occupations  seriously  inquired  into,  as  long  as  the  heef 
and  mutton  were  not  stinted,  and  the  liquor  flowed  in 
reasonable  streams.  As  to  his  theological  tenets,  or 
knowledge  of  history,  either  sacred  or  profane,  the 
highest  ecclesiastic  was  on  the  same  level  of  utter  igno- 
rance and  indifference  with  the  lowest  of  his  serfs. 
There  were  no  books  of  controversial  divinity  in  all  this 
century.  There  were  no  studies  exacted  from  priest  or 
prelate.  All  that  was  required  was  an  inordinate  zeal 
in  the  discovery  of  holy  relics,  and  an  acquaintance  with 
the  unnumbered  ceremonies  performed  in  the  celebra- 
tion of  the  service.  Morals  were  in  as  low  a  state  as 
learning.  Debauchery,  drunkenness,  and  un cleanness 
were  the  universal  characteristics  both  of  monk  and 
secular.  So  it  is  a  satisfaction  to  turn  from  the  wi-etched 
spectacle  of  the  decaying  and  corrupt  condition  of  an 
old  society,  to  the  hardier  vices  of  a  new  and  undegene- 
rated  people.  Better  the  unreasoning  vigour  of  the 
Normans,  and  their  wild  trust  in  Thor  and  Odin — their 
spirit  of  personal  independence  and  pride  in  the  manly 
exercises — than  the  creeping  submission  of  an  unedu- 
cated population,  trampled  on  by  their  brutal  lay  supe- 
riors, and  cheated  out  of  money  and  labour  by  the 
artifices  of  their  priests. 

EoUo,  the  Norman  chief,  had  pushed  his  unresisted 
galleys  up  the  Seine,  and  strongly  intrenched  himself 
in  Rouen,  in  the  first  year  of  this  century.  From  this 
citadel,  so  admirably  selected  for  his  purposes,  whether 
of  defence  or  conquest,  he  spread  his  expeditions  on 
every  side.  The  boats  were  so  light  that  no  shallowness 
of  water  hindered  their  progress  even  to  the  great 
valleys  where  the  river  was  still  a  brook.  When  impe- 
diments were  encountered  on  the  way,  in  the  form  of 
waterfall,  or,  more  rarely,  of  bridge  or  weir,  the  adven- 


NORSE   SETTLEMENTS.  228 

turers  sprang  to  shore  and  carried  their  vessels  along 
the  land.  When  greater  booty  tempted  them,  they 
even  crossed  long  tracts  of  country,  hauling  their  boats 
along  with  them,  and  launching  them  in  some  peaceful 
vale  far  away  from  the  sea.  Every  islet  in  the  f  vers 
was  seized  and  fortified ;  so  that,  dotted  about  over  all 
the  beautiful  lands  between  the  Seine  and  the  borders 
of  Flanders,  were  stout  Norman  colonies,  with  all  the 
pillage  they  had  obtained  securely  guarded  in  those  un- 
assailable retreats,  and  ready  to  carry  their  maritime 
depredations  wherever  a  canoe  could  swim.  Their 
rapidity  of  locomotion  was  equal  to  that  of  the  Saracenic 
hordes  who  had  poured  down  from  the  Pyrenees  in  the 
days  of  Charles  the  Hammer.  But  the  Norsemen  were 
of  sterner  stuff  than  the  light  chivalry  of  Abderach- 
man.  "Where  they  stopped  they  took  root.  They  found 
it  impossible  to  carry  off  all  the  treasure  they  had 
seized,  and  therefore  determined  to  stay  beside  it. 
Eouen  was  at  first  about  to  be  laid  waste,  but  the  policy 
of  the  bishop  preserved  it  from  destruction,  while  the 
wisdom  of  the  rovers  converted  it  into  a  fortress  of  the 
greatest  strength.  Strong  walls  were  reared  all  round. 
The  beautiful  river  was  guarded  night  and  day  by  their 
innumerable  fleet,  and  in  a  short  time  it  was  recognised 
equally  by  friend  and  foe  as  the  capital  and  headquarters 
of  a  new  race.  Nor  were  the  Normans  left  entirely  to 
Scandinavia  for  recruits.  The  glowing  reports  of  their 
success,  which  successively  arrived  at  their  ancient 
homes,  of  course  inspired  the  ambitious  listeners  with 
an  irresistible  desire  to  launch  forth  and  share  their 
fortune;  but  there  were  not  wanting  thousands  of  volun- 
teers near  at  hand.  King  and  duke,  bishop  and  baron, 
were  all  unable  to  give  protection  to  the  cultivator  of 
the  soil  and  shepherd  of  the  flock.  These  humble  suf- 
ferers saw  their  cabins  fired,  and  all  their  victuals  d© 


224  TENTH   CENTtJKY. 

stroyed.  Eollo  was  too  politic  to  make  it  a  war  oi 
extermination  against  the  unresisting  inhabitants,  and 
easily  opened  his  ranks  for  their  reception.  The  result 
was  that;  in  those  disastrous  excursions,  shouting  the 
war-cry  of  ^Norway,  and  brandishing  the  pirate's  axe, 
were  many  of  the  original  Franks  and  Gauls,  allured  by 
the  double  inducement  of  escaping  further  injury  them- 
selves and  taking  vengeance  on  their  former  oppressors. 
Religious  scruples  did  not  stand  in  their  way.  They 
g'ave  in  their  adhesion  to  the  gods  of  the  North,  and 
proved  themselves  true  converts  to  Thor  and  Odin,  by 
eating  the  flesh  of  a  horse  that  had  been  slain  in  sacri- 
fice. It  is  perhaps  this  heathen  association  with  horse- 
flesh as  an  article  of  food,  which  has  banished  it  from 
Christian  consumption  for  so  long  a  time.  But  an  effort 
is  now  made  in  France  to  rescue  the  fattened  and  roasted 
steed  from  the  obloquy  of  its  first  introduction ;  and  the 
success  of  the  movement  would  be  complete  if  there 
were  no  other  difficulty  to  contend  against  than  the 
stigma  of  its  idolatrous  origin.  Yet  the  recruits  were 
not  all  on  one  side,  for  we  read  of  certain  sea-kings  who 
have  gi'own  tired  of  their  wandering  life,  and  taken  ser- 
vice under  the  kings  of  France.  Of  these  the  most 
famous  was  Hastings,  whom  we  saw  defeated  at  the  end 
of  the  last  century,  on  the  banks  of  the  river  Lea.  He  is 
old  now,  and  so  far  forgetful  of  his  Scandinavian  origin 
that  some  French  annalists  claim  him  as  a  countryman 
of  their  own,  and  maintain  that  he  was  the  sor  of  a 
husbandman  near  Troyes.  He  is  now  a  great  landed 
lord,  Count  of  Chartres,  and  in  high  favour  with  the 
French  king.  When  Eollo  had  established  his  forces  on 
the  banks  of  the  Eure,  one  of  the  tributaries  of  the 
Seine,  the  ancient  pirate  went  at  the  head  of  an  embassy 
to  see  what  the  new-comer  required.  Standing  on  the 
farther  bank  of  the  little  river,  he  raised  his  voice,  and 


ROLLO.  22£ 

ill  good  Norwegian  demanded  who  they  were,  and  who 
was  their  lord.  "We  have  no  lord!"  they  said:  "we 
are  all  equal."  "  And  why  do  you  come  into  this  land, 
and  what  are  you  going  to  do  ?"  "  Wo  are  going  to 
chase  away  the  inhabitants,  and  make  the  country  oui 
home.  But  who  are  you,  who  speak  our  language  so 
well?"  The  count  replied,  "Did  you  never  hear  of 
Hastings  the  famous  pirate,  who  had  so  many  ships 
upon  the  sea,  and  did  such  evil  to  this  realm  ?"  "  Of 
course,"  replied  the  Norsemen :  "  Hastings  began  well, 
but  has  ended  poorly."  "Have  you  no  wish,  then," 
said  Hastings,  "  to  submit  yourselves  to  King  Charles, 
who  offers  you  land  and  honours  on  condition  of  fealty 
and  service?"  "Off!  off! — we  will  submit  ourselves  to 
no  man;  and  all  we  can  take  wo  shall  keep,  without 
dependence  on  any  one.  Go  and  tell  the  king  so,  if  you 
like."  Hastings  returned  from  his  unsuccessful  embassy, 
and  the  attempt  at  compromise  was  soon  after  followed 
by  a  victory  of  Eollo,  which  decided  the  fate  of  the  king- 
dom. The  conquerors  mounted  the  Seine,  and  laid  siege 
to  Paris ;  but  failing  in  this,  they  retraced  their  course  to 
Eouen,  and  made  themselves  masters  of  Bayeux,  and  of 
other  places.  Eollo  was  now  raised  to  supreme  com- 
mand by  the  voices  of  his  followers,  and  took  rank  as  an 
independent  chief  But  he  was  too  sagacious  a  leader  to 
rely  entirely  on  the  favour  or  success  of  his  countrymen. 
He  protected  the  native  population,  and  reconciled  them 
to  the  absence  of  their  ancient  masters,  by  the  increased 
security  in  life  and  property  which  his  firmness  pro- 
duced. He  is  said  to  have  hung  a  bracelet  of  gold  in  an 
exposed  situation,  with  no  defence  but  the  terror  of  his 
justice,  and  no  one  tried  to  remove  it.  He  saw,  also,  that 
however  much  his  power  might  be  dreaded,  and  his 
family  feared,  by  the  great  nobility  of  France  with  whom 
he  was  brought  into  contact,  his  position  as  a  heathen  and 


226  TENTH   CENTURY. 

isolated  settler  placed  him  in  an  inferior  situation.  The 
Archbishop  of  Eouen,  who  had  been  his  ally  in  the 
peaceable  occupation  of  the  city,  was  beside  him,  with 
many  arguments  in  favour  of  the  Christian  faith.  The 
time  during  which  the  populations  had  been  intermixed 
had  smoothed  many  difficulties  on  either  side.  The 
worship  of  Thor  and  Odin  was  felt  to  be  out  cf  place  in 
the  midst  of  great  cathedrals  and  wealthy  monasteries, 
and  it  created  no  surprise  when,  in  a  few  years,  the 
ambitious  Eollo  descended  from  his  proud  independence, 
did  suit  and  service  to  his  feeble  adversary 
Charles  the  Simple,  and  retained  all  his  con- 
quests in  full  property  as  Duke  of  Normandy  and  Peer 
of  France. 

Alread}^  the  divinity  that  hedged  a  king  placed  the 
crown,  even  when  destitute  of  real  authority,  at  an  im- 
measurable height  above  the  loftiest  of  the  nobles;  and 
it  will  be  well  to  preserve  this  in  our  memory ;  for  to 
the  belief  in  this  mystical  dignity  of  the  sovereign,  the 
monarchical  principle  was  indebted  for  its  triumph  in 
all  the  states  of  Euroj^e.  ^o  matter  how  powerless  the 
anointed  ruler  might  be — no  matter  how  greatly  a  com- 
bination of  vassals,  or  a  single  vassal,  might  excel  him 
in  men  and  money — the  ineffable  supremacy  of  the 
sacred  head  was  never  denied.  This  strange  and  en- 
nobling sentiment  had  not  yet  penetrated  the  mind  of 
Eollo  and  his  followers,  at  the  great  ceremonial  of  his 
reception  as  a  feudatory  of  the  Crown.  He  declined  to 
bend  the  knee  before  his  suzerain,  but  gave  him  his  oath 
of  obedience  and  faith,  standing  at  his  full  height. 
When  a  stickler  for  court  etiquette  insisted  on  the  final 
ceremony  of  kissing  the  foot  of  the  feudal  superior,  the 
duke  made  a  sign  to  one  of  his  piratical  attendants  to 
go  through  the  form  instead  of  him.  Forth  stalked  the 
Norseman  towards  the  overjoyed  Charles,  and  without 


FEUDALISM.  227 

Utoopiug  his  body  laid  hold  of  the  royal  boot,  and,  lifting 
it  with  all  his  strength  up  to  his  mouth,  upset  tho  un- 
fortunate and  short-legged  monarch  on  his  back,  to  the 
great  consternation  of  his  courtiers,  and  the  hilarious 
enjoyment  of  his  new  subjects.  But  there  was  hence- 
forth a  new  element  in  French  society.  The  wanderers 
were  unanimously  converted  to  Christianity,  and  the 
shores  of  the  whole  kingdom  perpetually  guarded  from 
piratical  invaders  by  the  contented  and  warlike  country- 
men of  Hastings  and  EoUo.  Normandy  and  Brittany 
were  the  appanage  of  the  new  duke,  and  perhaps  they 
were  more  useful  to  the  French  monarch,  as  the  well- 
governed  territories  of  a  powerful  vassal,  than  if  he  had 
held  them  in  full  sovereignty  in  their  former  disorgan- 
ized and  helpless  state.  Language  soon  began  to  exert 
its  combining  influence  on  the  peoples  thus  brought  into 
contact,  and  in  a  few  years  the  rough  Norse  gave  place 
to  the  Eomanized  idiom  of  the  rest  of  the  kingdom,  and 
the  descendants  of  Eollo  in  the  next  generation  required 
an  intei-preter  if  any  of  their  relatives  came  to  visit 
them  from  Denmark. 

But  the  true  characteristic  event  of  this  century  was 
the  first  establishment  of  real  feudalism.  The  hereditary 
nature  of  lands  and  tenements  had  long  been  recog- 
nised; the  original  granter  had  long  surrendered  his 
right  to  reclaim  the  property  on  the  death  of  the  first 
possessor.  Gradually  also,  and  by  sufferance,  the  offices 
to  which,  in  the  stronger  periods  of  royalty,  the  favoured 
subjects  had  been  promoted  for  life  or  a  definite  time 
were  considered  to  belong  to  the  descendant  of  the 
holder.  But  it  was  only  now,  in  the  weak  administra- 
tion of  a  series  of  nominal  kings,  that  the  rights  and 
privileges  of  a  titular  nobility  were  legally  recognised, 
and  large  portions  of  the  monarchy  forever  conveyed 
ft  way  from  the  control  of  the  Crown.     There  is  a  sort 


228 


TENTH   CENTURY. 


of  natural  feudalism  which  must  always  exist  where 
there  are  degrees  of  power  and  influence,  and  which  la 
as  potent  at  this  moment  as  in  the  time  we  are  describ- 
ing. A  man  who  expects  a  favour  owes  and  performs 
suit  and  service  to  the  man  who  has  the  power  of  be- 
gtowing  it.  A  man  with  land  to  let,  with  money  to 
lend;  with  patronage  to  exert,  is  in  a  sort  of  way  the 
"  superior"  of  him  who  wants  to  take  the  farm,  or  bor- 
row the  money,  or  get  the  advancement.  The  obliga- 
tions of  these  positions  are  mutual;  and  only  very  ad- 
vanced philosophers  in  the  theory  of  disunion  and  in- 
gratitude would  object  to  the  reciprocal  feelings  of  kind- 
ness and  attachment  they  naturally  produce.  In  a  lese 
settled  state  of  society,  such  as  that  now  existing,  oi 
which  lately  existed,  at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and  in 
New  Zealand,  the  feudal  principle  is  fresh  and  vigorous, 
though  not  recognised  under  that  name,  for  the  peaceful 
or  weak  are  glad  to  pay  deference  and  respect  to  the 
wield  er  of  the  protective  sword.  In  the  tenth  century 
there  were  customs,  but  no  laws,  for  laws  presuppose 
some  external  power  able  to  enforce  them,  and  the  decay 
of  the  kingly  authority  had  left  the  only  practical 
government  in  the  hands  of  the  great  and  powerful. 
They  gave  protection  in  return  for  obedience.  But 
when  more  closely  inquired  into,  this  assumption  of 
authority  by  a  nobility  or  upper  class  is  found  to  have 
been  purely  defensive  on  the  part  of  the  lay  proprietors, 
against  the  advancing  tide  of  a  spiritual  Democracy, 
which  threatened  to  submerge  the  whole  of  Europe. 
Already  the  bishops  and  abbots  had  got  possession  of 
nearly  half  the  realm  of  France,  and  in  other  countries 
they  were  equally  well  provided.  Those  great  officers 
were  the  leaders  of  innumerable  priests  and  monks,  and 
owed  their  dignities  to  the  popular  will.  The  Pope 
himself — a  sovereign  prince  when  once  placed  in  the 


RESISTANCE  TO   THE   CHURCH.  229 

Bhair  of  St.  Peter — was  indebted  for  his  exaltation  to  a 
plurality  of  votes  of  the  clergy  and  people  of  Eome. 
Election  was,  in  fact,  the  nniversal  form  of  constituting 
the  rule  under  which  men  were  to  live.  But  who  were 
the  electors  ?  The  appointment  was  still  nominally  in 
the  people,  but  the  people  were  almost  entirely  under 
the  influence  of  the  clerical  orders.  Mechanics  and 
labourers  were  the  serfs  or  dependants  of  the  rich 
monasteries,  and  tillers  of  the  episcopal  lands.  The 
citizens  had  not  yet  risen  into  wealth  or  intelligence, 
and,  though  subject  in  their  persons  to  the  baron  whoso 
castle  commanded  their  walls,  they  were  still  under  the 
guidance  of  their  priests.  No  middle  class  existed  to 
hold  the  balance  even  between  the  nobility  and  the 
Church ;  and  the  masses  of  the  population  were  naturally 
disposed  to  throw  power  into  the  hands  of  persons  who 
sprang,  in  most  instances,  from  families  no  better  than 
their  own,  and  recommended  themselves  to  popular 
favour  by  opposition  (often  just,  but  always  domineering) 
to  the  proceedings  of  the  lay  aristocracy.  The  labour- 
ing serfs,  who  gave  the  vote,  were  not  much  inferior  in 
education  or  refinement  to  the  ordained  serfs  who  can- 
vassed for  their  favour.  Abbacies,  priories,  bishoprics, 
parochial  incumbencies,  and  all  cathedral  dignities,  were 
neld  by  a  body  distinct  from  the  feudal  gentry,  and 
elevated,  mediately  or  immediately,  by  universal  suf 
frage.  If  some  stop  had  not  been  put  to  the  aggressions 
of  the  priesthood,  all  the  lands  in  Christendom  would 
have  been  absorbed  by  its  insatiable  greed — all  the 
offices  of  the  State  would  have  been  conveyed  to  sacer- 
dotal holders ;  all  kings  would  have  been  nominated  by 
the  clerical  voice  alone,  and  freedom  and  progress  would 
never  have  had  their  birth.  The  monarchs — though  it 
\8  almost  mockery  to  call  them  so  in  England — were 
w^aging  an  unsuccessful  war  with  the  pretensions  of  St 


230  TENTH   CENTURY. 

Dunstan,  who  was  an  embodiment  of  the  pitiless  harsh- 
ness and  blind  ambition  of  a  zealot  for  ecclesiastic 
supremacy.  In  France  a  succession  of  imbecile  rulers, 
whose  characters  are  clearly  enough  to  be  guessed  from 
the  descriptive  epithets  which  the  old  chroniclers  have 
attached  to  their  names,  had  left  the  Crown  a  prey  to 
all  its  enemies.  "What  was  to  be  expected  from  a 
series  of  governors  whose  mark  in  history  is  made  by 
such  nicknames  as  "The  Bald,"  "The  Stammerer/' 
"  The  Fat,"  and  finally,  without  circumlocution,  "  The 
Fool"  ?  Everybody  tried  to  get  as  much  out  of  the 
royal  plunder  as  he  could.  Bishops  got  lands  and 
churches.  Foreign  pirates,  we  have  seen,  got  whole 
counties  at  a  time,  and  in  self-defence  the  nobility  were 
forced  to  join  in  the  universal  spoil.  Counties  as  large 
as  Normandy  were  retained  as  rightful  inheritances,  in- 
dependent of  all  but  nominal  adhesion  to  the  throne. 
Smaller  properties  were  kept  fast  hold  of,  on  the  same 
pretence.  And  by  this  one  step  the  noble  was  placed 
in  a  position  of  advantage  over  his  rival  the  encroaching 
bishop.  His  power  was  not  the  mere  creation  of  a  vote 
or  the  possession  of  a  lifetime.  His  family  had  founda- 
tions on  which  to  build  through  a  long  succession  of 
generations.  Marriage,  conquest,  gift,  and  purchase,  all 
tended  to  the  consolidation  of  his  influence ;  and  the  re- 
sult was,  that,  instead  of  one  feeble  and  decaying  poten- 
tate in  the  person  of  the  king,  to  resist  the  aggressions 
of  an  absorbing  and  levelling  Church,  there  were  hun- 
dreds all  over  the  land,  democratic  enough  in  regard  to 
their  dislike  of  the  supremacy  of  the  sovereign,  but 
burning  with  a  deep-seated  aristocratic  hatred  of  the 
territorial  aggrandizement  of  the  dissolute  and  low-bom 
clergy.  Europe  was  either  in  this  century  to  be  ruled 
by  mailed  barons  or  surpliced  priests.  Sometimes  they 
played  into  each  other's  hands.     Sometimes  the  warrioi 


HUGH   CAPET.  28l 

overwhelmed  an  adversary  by  enlisting  on  his  side  the 
sympathies  of  the  Church.  Sometimes  the  Church,  in 
its  controversies  with  the  Crown,  cast  itself  on  the  pro- 
tection of  the  warrior,  but  more  frequently  it  threw  its 
weight  into  the  scale  of  the  vacillating  monarch,  who 
could  reward  it  with  such  munificent  donations.  But 
those  munificent  donations  were  equivalent  to  aggressions 
on  the  nobles.  There  was  no  use  in  their  trying  to  check 
the  aggrandizement  of  the  clerical  power,  if  the  Crown 
continued  its  gifts  of  territory  and  offices  to  the  priests 
and  churches.  And  at  last,  when  the  strong-handed 
barons  of  France  were  tired  out  with  the  fatuity  of  their 
effete  kings,  they  gave  the  last  proof  of  the  supremacy 
they  had  attained,  by  departing  from  the  line  of  Charle- 
magne and  placing  one  of  themselves  upon  the  throne. 
Hugh  Capet,  the  chief  of  the  feudal  nobles,  was  chosen 
to  wear  the  crown  as  delegate  and  representative  of  the 
rest.  The  old  Mayors  of  the  Palace  had  been  revived 
in  his  family  for  some  generations;  and  when  Louis  the 
son  of  Lothaire  died,  after  a  twelvemonth's  permissive 
reign,  in  987,  the  warriors  and  land-owners  turned  in- 
stinctively to  the  strongest  and  most  distinguished 
member  of  their  body  to  be  the  guardian  of  the  privi- 
leges they  had  already  secured.  This  was  an  aristocra- 
tic movement  against  the  lineal  supremacy  of  the  Crown, 
and  in  reply  to  the  democratic  policy  of  the  Church. 
But  the  Pope  was  too  clear-sighted  to  lose  the  chance  of 
attaching  another  champion  to  the  papal  chair.  He 
„„„  made  haste  to  ratify  the  new  nomination  to  the 

A.D.  987.  "^ 

throne,  and  pronounced  Hugh  Capet  "  King  of 
France  in  right  of  his  great  deeds." 

Hugh  Capet  had  been  first  of  the  feudal  nobility;  but 
from  thenceforth  he  laboured  to  be  "every  inch  a  king.'' 
He  tried  to  please  both  parties,  and  to  humble  them  at 
the  same  time.     He  did  not  lavish  crown-lands  or  lofty 


232  TENTH   CENTURt. 

employments  on  the  clergy;  he  took  a  new  and  very 
economical  way  of  attaching  them  to  his  cause.  He 
procured  his  election,  it  is  not  related  by  what  means, 
to  the  highest  dignities  in  the  Church,  and,  although  not 
in  holy  orders,  was  invested  with  the  abbacies  of  St. 
Denis  and  St.  Martin's  and  St.  Germain's.  The  clergy 
were  delighted  with  the  increase  to  the  respectability 
of  their  order,  which  had  thus  a  king  among  its  oflSce- 
bearers.  The  Pope,  we  have  seen,  was  first  to  declare 
his  legitimacy ;  the  bishops  gave  him  their  support,  as 
they  felt  sure  that,  as  a  threefold  abbot,  he  must  have 
interests  identical  with  their  own.  He  was  fortunate, 
also,  in  gaining  still  more  venerated  supporters;  for 
while  he  was  building  a  splendid  tomb  at  St.  Yalery, 
the  saint  of  that  name  appeared  to  him  and  said,  with 
larger  promise  than  the  witches  to  Banquo,  "  Thou  and 
thy  descendants  shall  be  kings  to  the  remotest  genera- 
tions." 

With  the  nobles  he  proceeded  in  a  different  manner. 
His  task,  you  will  remember,  was  to  regain  the  universal 
submission  of  the  nation ;  and  success  at  first  seemed 
almost  hopeless,  for  his  real  power,  like  that  of  the 
weakest  of  his  immediate  predecessors,  extended  no 
further  than  his  personal  holdings.  In  his  fiefs  of 
France  proper  (the  small  district  including  Paris)  and 
Burgundy  he  was  all-powerful;  but  in  the  other  princi- 
palities and  dukedoms  he  was  looked  on  merely  as  a 
neighbouring  potentate  with  some  shadowy  claims  of 
suzerainty,  with  no  right  of  interference  in  their  in- 
ternal administration.  The  other  feudatories  under  the 
old  monarchy,  but  who  were  in  reality  independent  sove- 
reigns under  the  new,  were  the  Dukes  of  IS'ormandy  and 
Flanders,  and  Aquitaine  and  Toulouse,  These  made  the 
six  lay  peerages  of  the  kingdom,  and,  with  the  six  ecclesi- 
astical chief  rulers,  made  the  Twelve  Peers  of  France. 


CORONATION   OP   CAPET.  -83 

Of  the  lay  peerages  it  will  be  seen  that  Hugh  was  in 
possession  of  two — the  best  situated  and  most  populous 
of  all.  The  extent  of  his  possessions  and  the  influence 
of  his  name  were  excellent  starting-points  in  his  efforts 
to  restore  the  power  of  the  Crown ;  but  other  things 
were  required,  and  the  first  thing  he  aimed  at  was  to 
place  his  newly-acquired  dignity  on  the  same  vantage- 
ground  of  hereditary  succession  as  his  dukedoms  had 
long  been.  With  great  pomp  and  solemnity  he  himself 
was  anointed  with  the  holy  oil  by  the  hands  of  the 
Pope;  and  he  took  advantage  of  the  self-satisfied  secu- 
rity of  the  other  nobles  to  have  the  ceremony  of 
a  coronation  performed  on  his  son  during  his 
lifetime,  and  by  this  arrangement  the  appearance  of 
election  was  avoided  at  his  death.  Its  due  weight  must 
bo  given  to  the  universal  superstition  of  the  time,  when 
we  attribute  such  importance  to  the  formal  consecration 
of  a  king.  Externals,  in  that  age,  were  all  in  all 
Something  mystic  and  divine,  as  we  have  said  before, 
was  supposed  to  reside  in  the  very  fact  of  having  the 
crown  placed  on  the  head  with  the  sanction  and  prayers 
of  the  Church.  Opposition  to  the  wearer  became  not 
only  treason,  but  impiety;  and  when  the  same  policy 
was  pursued  by  many  generations  of  Hugh's  successors, 
in  always  procuring  the  coronation  of  their  heirs  before 
their  demise,  and  thus  obliterating  the  remembrance  of 
the  elective  process  to  which  they  owed  their  position, 
the  royal  power  had  the  vast  advantage  of  hereditary 
descent  added  to  its  unsubstantial  but  never-abandoned 
claim  of  paramount  authority.  The  effects  of  this  mo- 
mentous change  in  the  dynasty  of  one  of  the  great 
European  nations  were  felt  in  all  succeeding  centuries. 
The  family  connection  between  the  house  of  France 
and  the  Empire  was  dissolved ;  and  the  struggle  between 
the  old  condition  of  society  and  the  rising  intelligence 


284  TENTH   CENTURY. 

of  the  peoples — which  is  the  great  characteristic  of  the 
Middle  Ages — took  a  more  defined  form  than  before: 
aristocracy  assumed  its  perfected  shape  of  king  and 
nobility  combined  for  mutual  defence  on  one  side,  and 
on  the  other  the  towns  and  great  masses  of  the  nations 
striving  for  freedom  and  privilege  under  the  leadership 
of  the  sympathizing  and  democratic  Church;  for  the 
Church  was  essentially  democratic,  in  spite  of  the  arro- 
gance and  grasping  spirit  of  some  of  its  principal  leaders. 
From  hereditary  aristocracy  and  hereditary  royalty  it 
was  equally  excluded;  and  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy 
has  had  this  good  effect,  if  no  other :  Its  members  were 
recruited  from  the  people,  and  derived  all  their  influence 
from  popular  support.  In  Germany  the  same  process 
was  going  on,  though  without  the  crowning  consumma- 
tion of  making  the  empire  non-elective.  Otho,  however 
— worthier  of  the  name  of  Great  than  many  who  have 
borne  that  ambitious  title — succeeded  in  limiting  that 
highest  of  European  dignities  to  the  possessors  of  the 
„,„   German  crown,  and  commenced  the  connection 

A.D.  962.  ^ 

between  Upper  Italy  and  the  Emperors  which 
still  subsists  (so  uneasily  for  both  pa^'ties)  under  the 
house  of  Austria. 

In  England  the  misery  of  the  population  had  reached 
its  maximum.  The  immigration  of  the  Norsemen  had 
been  succeeded  by  numberless  invasions,  accompanied 
with  all  the  horrors  of  barbarism  and  religious  hatred ; 
for  the  Danes  who  devastated  the  shores  in  this  age 
were  as  remorselessly  savage,  and  as  bitterly  heathen, 
as  their  predecessors  a  hundred  years  before,  l^o  place 
was  safe  for  the  unhappy  Christianized  Saxons.  Their 
Bufferings  were  of  the  same  kind  as  those  of  the  inha- 
bitants of  Kormandy  when  Eollo  began  his  ravages. 
Their  priest-ridden  kings  and  impoverished  nobles  could 
giv^  tliem  no  protection.    Bribes  wera  paid  to  the  assail* 


GENERAL    DEMORALIZATION.  '-^36 

Ants,  and  only  brought  over  increasing  and  hungrier 
hordes.  The  land  was  a  prey  to  wretchedness  of  every 
kind,  and  it  was  slender  consolation  to  the  starving  and 
trampled  multitudes  that  all  the  world  was  suffering  to 
almost  the  same  extent.  Saracens  were  devastating  the 
coasts  of  Italy,  and  a  wild  tribe  of  Sclaves  trying  to 
burst  through  the  Hungarian  frontier.  At  Eome  itself, 
the  capital  of  intellect  and  religion,  such  iniquities  were 
perpetrated  on  every  side  that  Protestant  authors  them- 
selves consent  to  draw  a  veil  over  them  for  the  sake  of 
human  nature ;  and  in  these  sketches  we  require  to  do 
nothing  more  than  allude  to  the  crimes  and  wickedness 
of  the  papal  court  as  one  of  the  features  by  which  the 
century  was  marked.  Women  of  high  rank  and  in- 
famous character  placed  the  companions  of  their  vices 
in  the  highest  offices  of  the  Church,  and  seated  their 
sons  or  paramours  on  the  papal  throne.  Spiritual  pre- 
tensions rose  almost  in  proportion  to  personal  immorality, 
and  the  curious  spectacle  was  presented  of  a  power  losing 
all  respect  at  home  by  conduct  which  the  heathen  em- 
perors of  the  first  century  scarcely  equalled ;  of  popes 
alternately  dethroning  and  imprisoning  each  other — 
sometimes  of  two  popes  at  a  time — always  dependent 
for  life  or  influence  on  the  will  of  the  emperor,  or  who- 
ever else  might  be  dominant  in  Italy — and  yet  success- 
fully claiming  the  submission  and  reverence  of  distant 
nations  as  "Bishop  of  all  the  world"  and  lineal  "succes- 
sors of  the  Prince  of  the  Apostles."  This  claim  had 
never  been  expressly  made  before,  and  is  perhaps  the 
most  conclusive  proof  of  the  darkness  and  ignorance  of 
this  period.  Men  were  too  besotted  to  observe  the  incon- 
gruity between  the  life  and  profession  of  those  blemishes 
of  the  Church,  even  when  by  travelling  to  the  seat  of 
government  they  had  the  opportunity  of  seeing  the 
Roman  pontiff  and  his  satellites  and  patrons.     The  rest 


236  TENTH   CENTURY. 

of  the  world  had  no  means  of  learning  the  real  state  of 
affairs.  Education  had  almost  died  out  among  the 
clergy  themselves.  Nobody  else  could  write  or  read. 
Travelling  monks  gave  perverted  versions,  we  may  be. 
lieve,  of  every  thing  likely  to  be  injurious  to  the  interests 
of  the  Church;  and  the  result  was,  that  everywhere 
beyond  the  city- walls  the  thunder  of  a  Boniface  the 
Seventh,  or  a  John  the  Twelfth,  was  considered  as  good 
thunder  as  if  it  had  issued  fi'om  the  virtuous  indignation 
of  St.  Paul. 

But  just  as  this  century  drew  to  a  close,  various  cir- 
cumstances concurred  to  produce  a  change  in  men's 
minds.  It  was  a  universally-diffused  belief  that  the 
world  would  come  to  an  end  when  a  thousand  years 
from  the  Saviour's  birth  were  expired.  The  year  999 
was  therefore  looked  upon  as  the  last  which  any  one 
would  see.  And  if  ever  signs  of  approaching  dissolu- 
tion were  shown  in  heaven  and  earth,  the  people  of  this 
century  might  be  pardoned  for  believing  that  they  were 
made  visible  to  them.  Even  the  breaking  up  of  morals 
and  law,  and  the  wide  deluge  of  sin  which  overspread 
all  lands,  might  be  taken  as  a  token  that  mankind  were 
deemed  unfit  to  occupy  the  earth  any  more.  In  addi- 
tion to  these  appalling  symptoms,  famines  were  renewed 
from  year  to  year  in  still  increasing  intensity  and  brought 
plague  and  pestilence  in  their  train.  The  land  was  left 
untilled,  the  house  unrepaired,  the  right  un vindicated; 
for  who  could  take  the  useless  trouble  of  ploughing  or 
building,  or  quarrelling  about  a  property,  when  so  few 
months  were  to  put  an  end  to  all  terrestrial  interests? 
Yet  even  for  the  few  remaining  days  the  multitudes 
must  be  fed.  Eobbcrs  frequented  every  road,  entered 
even  into  walled  towns;  and  there  was  no  authority  left 
to  protect  the  weak,  or  bring  the  wrong-doer  to  punish- 
ment.   Corn  and  cattle  were  at  length  exhausted ;  and 


FAMINE   AND    DESPAIR. 


237 


iu  a  great  part  of  tho  Continent  the  most  frightful  ex- 
tremities were  endured ;  and  when  endurance  could  go 
no  further,  tho  last  desperate  expedient  was  resorted  to, 
and  human  flesh  was  commonly  consumed..  One  man 
went  so  far  as  to  expose  it  for  sale  in  a  populous  market- 
town.  The  horror  of  this  open  confession  of  their  needs 
was  so  great,  that  the  man  was  burned,  but  more  for 
the  publicity  of  his  conduct  than  for  its  inherent  guilt. 
Despair  gave  a  loose  to  all  the  passions.  Nothing  was 
sacred — nothing  safe.  Even  when  food  might  have  been 
had,  the  vitiated  taste  made  bravado  of  its  depravation, 
and  women  and  children  were  killed  and  roasted  in  the 
madness  of  the  universal  fear.  Meantime  the  gentler 
natures  were  driven  to  the  wildest  excesses  of  fanaticism 
to  find  a  retreat  from  the  impending  judgment.  Kings 
and  emperors  begged  at  monastery-doors  to  be  admitted 
brethren  of  the  Order.  Henry  of  Germany  and  Robert 
of  France  were  saints  according  to  the  notions  of  the 
time,  and  even  now  deserve  the  respect  of  mankind  for 
the  simplicity  and  benevolence  of  their  characters 
Henry  the  Emperor  succeeded  in  being  admitted  as  a 
monk,  and  swore  obedience  on  the  hands  of  the  gentle 
abbot  who  had  failed  in  turning  him  from  his  purpose. 
"  Sire,"  he  said  at  last,  "  since  you  are  under  my  orders, 
and  have  sworn  to  obey  me,  I  command  you  to  go 
forth  and  fulfil  the  duties  of  the  state  to  which  God  has 
called  you.  Go  forth,  a  monk  of  the  Abbey  of  St.  Yanne, 
but  Emperor  of  the  West."  Robert  of  Franco,  the  son 
of  Hugh  Capet,  placed  himself,  robed  and  crowned, 
among  the  choristers  of  St.  Denis,  and  led  the  musicians 
in  singing  hymns  and  psalms  of  his  own  composition. 
Lower  men  were  satisfied  with  sacrificing  the  marks  of 
their  knightly  and  seignorial  rank,  and  placed  baldrics 
and  swords  on  the  altars  and  before  the  images  of  saints. 
Some  manumitted  their  serfs,  and  bestowed  large  sums 


^38  TENTH   CENTURY. 

upon  charitable  trusts,  commencing  their  disj)Osition 
with  words  implying  the  approaching  end  of  all 
Crowds  of  the  common  people  would  sleep  nowhere 
but  in  the  porches,  or  at  any  rate  within  the  shadow,  of 
the  churches  and  other  holy  buildings;  and  as  the  day 
of  doom  drew  nearer  and  nearer,  greater  efforts  were 
made  to  appease  the  wrath  of  Heaven.  Peace  was  pro- 
claimed between  all  classes  of  men.  From  Wednesday 
night  till  Monday  evening  of  each  week  there  was  to  be 
no  violence  or  enmity  or  war  in  all  the  land.  It  was  to 
be  a  Truce  of  God ;  and  at  last,  all  their  strivings  after 
a  better  state,  acknowledgments  of  a  depraved  condi- 
tion, and  heartfelt  longings  for  something  better,  purer, 
nobler,  received  their  consummation,  when,  in  the  place 
of  the  unprincipled  men  who  had  disgraced  Christianity 
by  carrying  vice  and  incredulity  into  the  papal  chair, 
there  was  appointed  to  the  highest  of  ecclesiastical  dig- 
nities a  man  worthy  of  his  exaltation ;  and  the  good  and 
holy  Gerbert,  the  tutor,  guide,  and  friend  of  Eobert  of 
France,  was  appointed  Pope  in  998,  and  took  the  name 
cf  Sylvester  the  Second. 


ELEVENTH  CENTURY. 


iSmperocs  of  (^ecmang. 

AD. 

Otuo  III. — [cont.) 
1002.  Henry  of  Bavaria. 

1024.   CJONRAD  II. 

1039.  Henrf  III. 
1056.  Henry  IV. 


Kings  of  ISnglantr. 

Ethelred  II. — [cont.) 

1013.   SWEYN. 

1015.  Canute  the  Great 

1017.  Edmund  II. 

1039.  Harold  and  Hardi- 
canute. 

1042.  Edward  the  Confessor. 

1066.  Harold,    (son   of  God- 
win.) 

:066.  William     the    Conquer- 
or. 

1087.  William  Rufus. 


iSmperors  of  tfie  iSast. 

A.D. 

Basilius. — {emt) 
1028.   ROMANUS  III. 

1042.  Empress  Zoe  and  Theo- 
dora. 

1056.  Michael  VI. 

1057.  Isaac  Comnenus. 

1059.  ConstantineX.,(Ducas.) 

1067.  Eudoxia  and  Constan- 

tine  XI. 

1068.  Rom ANusI v., (Diogenes.) 
1071.  Michael. 

Two   Princes    of    the 
House  of  the  Com- 


1078 
1081 


:{ 


1081. 


nam. 
Alexis  I. 


1096. 


Kings  of  ^France. 

Robert    the    Wise. — 
{cont.) 
1031.  Henry  I. 
1060.  Philip  I. 

The  First  Crusade. 


aiutfjors. 

Anselm,  (1003-1079,)   Abelard,   (1079-1142,)   Berenqabios. 
RoscELiN,  Lanfranc,  Theophylact,  (1077.) 


THE  ELEYENTH  CENTTIRT. 

tBE     COMMENCEMENT     OF     IMPROVEMENT GREGORY     THE 

SEVENTH FIRST   CRUSADE. 

And  now  came  the  dreaded  or  hoped-for  year.  The 
awful  Thousand  had  at  last  commenced,  and  men  held 
their  hreath  to  watch  what  would  be  the  result  of  its 
arrival.  "  And  he  laid  hold  of  the  dragon,  that  old  ser- 
pent, which  is  the  Devil,  and  Satan,  and  bound  him  for 
a  thousand  years,  and  cast  him  into  the  bottomless  pit, 
and  shut  him  up,  and  set  a  seal  upon  him,  that  he  should 
deceive  the  nations  no  more,  till  the  thousand  years 
should  be  fulfilled :  and  after  that  he  must  be  loosed  a 
little  season."  (Eevelation  xx.  2,  3.)  With  this  text 
all  the  pulpits  in  Christendom  had  been  ringing  for  a 
whole  generation.  And  not  the  pulpits  only,  but  the  re- 
fection-halls of  convents,  and  the  cottages  of  the  starving 
peasantry.  Into  the  castle  also  of  the  noble,  we  have 
seen,  it  had  penetrated;  and  the  most  abject  terror  per- 
vaded the  superstitious,  while  despair,  as  in  shipwrecked 
vessels,  displayed  itself  amid  the  masses  of  the  popula- 
tion in  rioting  and  insubordination.  The  spirit  of  evil 
for  a  little  season  was  to  be  let  loose  upon  a  sinful 
world ;  and  wfien  the  observer  looked  round  at  the  real 
condition  of  the  people  in  all  parts  of  Europe — at  the 
ignorance  and  degradation  of  the  multitude,  the  cruelty 
of  the  lords,  and  the  unchristian  ambition  and  unre- 
Btrained  passions  of  the  clergy — it  must  have  puzzled 
him  how  to  imagine  a  worse  state  of  things  even  when 
the  chain  was  loosened  from  ^'that  old  serpent,"  and 

n  2« 


242  ELEVENTH   CENTURY. 

the  world  placed  unresistingly  in  his  folds.  Yet,  as  if 
men's  minds  had  now  reached  their  lowest  point,  there 
was  a  perpetual  rise  from  the  beginning  of  this  date- 
When  the  first  day  of  the  thousand-and-first  year  shone 
upon  the  world,  it  seemed  that  in  all  nations  the  torpor 
of  the  past  was  to  be  thrown  off.  There  were  strivings 
everywhere  after  a  new  order  of  things.  Coming  events 
cast  their  shadows  a  long  way  before ;  for  in  the  very 
beginning  of  this  century,  when  it  was  reported  that 
Jerusalem  had  been  taken  by  the  Saracens,  Sylvester 
uttered  the  memorable  words,  "  Soldiers  of  Christ,  arise 
and  fight  for  Zion."  Ey  a  combination  of  all  Christian 
powers  for  one  object,  he  no  doubt  hoped  to  put  an  end 
to  the  party  quarrels  by  which  Europe  was  torn  in 
pieces.  And  this  great  thought  must  have  been  ger- 
minating in  the  popular  heart  ever  since  the  speech  was 
spoken ;  for  we  shall  see  at  the  end  of  the  period  we  are 
describing  how  instantaneously  the  cry  for  a  crusade 
was  responded  to  in  all  lands.  In  the  mean  time,  the 
first  joy  of  their  deliverance  from  the  expected  destruc- 
tion impelled  all  classes  of  society  in  a  more  honourable 
and  useful  path  than  they  had  ever  hitherto  trod.  As 
if  by  universal  consent,  the  first  attention  was  paid  to 
the  maintenance  of  the  churches,  those  holy  buildings 
by  whose  virtues  the  wrath  of  Heaven  had  been  turned 
away.  In  France,  and  Italy,  and  Germany,  the  fabrics 
had  in  many  places  been  allowed  to  fall  into  ruin.  They 
were  now  renovated  and  ornamented  with  the  costliest 
materials,  and  with  an  architectural  skill  which,  if  it 
previously  existed,  had  had  no  room  for  its  display. 
Stately  cathedrals  took  the  place  of  the  humble  buildings 
in  which  the  services  had  been  conducted  before.  Every 
thing  was  projected  on  a  gigantic  scale,  with  the  idea 
of  permanence  prominently  brought  forward,  now  that 
the  threatened  end  of  all  things  was  seen  to  be  post 


BUILDINGS.  24a 

poned.  The  foundations  were  broad  and  deep,  the  walls 
of  immense  thickness,  roofs  steep  and  high  to  keep  off 
the  rain  and  snow,  and  square  buttressed  towers  to  sus- 
tain the  church  and  furnish  it  at  the  same  time  with 
military  defence.  It  was  a  holy  occupation,  and  the 
clergy  took  a  prominent  part  in  the  new  movement. 
Bishops  and  monks  were  the  principal  members  of  a 
confraternity  who  devoted  themselves  to  the  science  of 
architecture  and  founded  all  their  works  on  the  exact 
rules  of  s;;rmmetry  and  fitness.  Artists  from  Italy, 
where  Eom&n  models  were  everywhere  seen,  and  enthu- 
siastic students  from  the  south  of  France,  where  the 
great  works  of  the  Empire  must  have  exercised  an  en- 
nobling influence  on  their  taste  and  fancy,  brought  their 
tribute  of  memory  or  invention  to  the  design.  Tall 
pillars  supported  the  elevated  vault,  instead  of  the  flat 
roof  of  former  days;  and  gradually  an  approach  was 
made  to  what,  in  after-periods,  was  recognised  as  the 
pure  Gothic.  Here,  then,  was  at  last  a  real  science,  the 
offspring  of  the  highest  aspirations  of  the  human  mind. 
Churches  rising  in  rich  profusion  in  all  parts  of  the 
country  were  the  centres  of  architectural  taste.  The 
castle  of  the  noble  was  no  longer  to  be  a  mere  mass  of 
stones  huddled  on  each  other,  to  protect  its  inmates 
from  outward  attack.  The  skill  of  the  learned  builder 
was  called  in,  and  on  picturesque  heights,  safe  from  hos 
tile  assault  by  the  difficulty  of  approach,  rose  turret  and 
bartizan,  arched  gateway  and  square-flanked  towers,  to 
add  new  features  to  the  landscape,  and  help  the  march 
of  civilization,  by  showing  to  that  allegorizing  ago  the 
result,  both  for  strength  and  beauty,  of  regularity  and 
proportion.  For  at  this  time  allegory,  which  gave  an 
inner  meaning  to  outward  things,  was  in  full  force. 
There  was  no  ]-ortion  of  the  parish  church  which  had 
not  its  mystical  significance  j  and  no  doubt,  at  the  end 


244  ELEVENTH   CENTURY. 

of  this  century,  the  architectural  meaning  of  the  exter- 
nal  alteration  of  the  structure  was  perceived,  when  the 
great  square  tower,  which  typified  resistance  to  worldly 
aggression,  was  exchanged  for  the  tall  and  graceful  spire 
which  pointed  encouragingly  to  heaven.  Occasions  were 
eagerly  sought  for  to  give  employment  to  the  ruling 
passion.  Building  went  on  in  all  quarters.  The  begin- 
ning of  this  century  found  eleven  hundred  and  eight 
monasteries  in  France  alone.  In  the  course  of  a  few 
years  she  was  put  in  possession  of  three  hundred  and 
twenty-six  more.  The  magnificent  Abbey  of 
*  Fontenelle  was  restored  in  1035  by  "VYilliam  of 
Normandy;  and  this  same  William,  whom  we  shall 
afterwards  see  in  the  somewhat  different  character  of 
Conqueror  and  devastator  of  England,  was  the  founder 
and  patron  of  more  abbeys  and  monasteries  than  any 
other  man.  Many  of  them  are  still  erect,  to  attest  the 
solidity  of  his  work;  the  ruins  of  the  others  raise  our 
surprise  that  they  are  not  yet  entire — so  vast  in  their 
extent  and  gigantic  in  their  materials.  But  the  same 
character  of  permanence  extended  to  all  the  works  of 
this  great  builder's*  hands — the  systems  of  government 
no  less  than  the  fabrics  of  churches.  The  remains  of  his 
feudalism  in  our  country,  no  less  than  the  fragments  of 
his  masonry  at  Bayeux,  Fecamp,  and  St.  Michael's, 
attest  the  cyclopean  scale  on  which  his  superstructures 
were  reared.  Nor  were  these  great  architectural  efforts 
which  characterize  this  period  made  only  on  behalf  of 
the  clergy.  It  gives  a  very  narrow  notion,  as  Michelet 
has  observed,  of  the  uses  and  purposes  of  those  enor- 
mous buildings,  to  view  them  merely  as  places  for  public, 
worship  and  the  other  offices  of  religion.  The  church 
in  a  district  was,  in  those  days,  what  a  hundred  other 

*  He  was  called  Le  Grand  B&tisseur. 


CHURCHES.  246 

buildings  are  required  to  make  up  in  the  present.  It 
was  the  town-hall,  the  market-place,  the  concert-room, 
the  theatre,  the  school,  the  news-room,  and  the  vestry, 
all  in  one.  We  are  to  remember  that  poverty  was 
almost  universal.  The  cottages  in  which  the  serfs  and 
even  the  freemen  resided  were  wretched  hovels.  They 
had  no  windows,  they  were  damp  and  airless,  and  were 
merely  considered  the  human  kennels  into  which  the 
peasantry  retired  to  sleep.  In  contrast  to  this  miserable 
den  there  arose  a  building  vast  and  beautiful,  conse- 
crated by  religion,  ornamented  with  carving  and  colour, 
large  enough  to  enable  the  whole  population  to  wander 
m  its  aisles,  with  darker  recesses  under  the  shade  of 
pillars,  to  give  opportunity  for  familiar  conversation  or 
the  enjoyment  of  the  family  meal.  The  church  was  the 
poor  man's  palace,  where  he  felt  that  all  the  building 
belonged  to  him  and  was  erected  for  his  use.  It  was 
also  his  castle,  where  no  enemy  could  reach  him,  and 
the  love  and  pride  which  filled  his  heart  in  contemplat- 
ing the  massive  proportions  and  splendid  elevation  of 
the  glorious  fane  overflowed  towards  the  officers  of  the 
church.  The  priest  became  glorified  in  his  eyes  as  the 
officiating  servant  in  that  greatest  of  earthly  buildings, 
and  the  bishop  far  outshone  the  dignity  of  kings  when 
it  was  known  that  he  had  plenary  authority  over  many 
such  majestic  fabrics.  Ascending  from  the  known  to 
the  unknown,  the  Pope  of  Home,  the  Bishop  of  Bishops, 
shone  upon  the  bewildered  mind  of  the  peasant  with  a 
light  reflected  from  the  object  round  which  all  his  vene- 
ration had  gathered  from  his  earliest  days — the  scene 
of  all  the  incidents  of  his  life — the  haUowed  sanctuary 
into  which  he  had  been  admitted  as  an  infant,  and 
whose  vaults  should  echo  to  the  funeral  service  when  he 
should  have  died. 
But  this  centuzy  was  distinguished  for  an  upheaving 


246  ELEVENTH   CENTURY. 

of  the  human  mind,  which  found  its  development  in 
other  things  beaides  the  bursting  forth  of  architectural 
Bkill.  It  seemed  that  the  chance  of  continued  endur- 
ance, vouchsafed  to  mankind  by  the  rising  of  the  sun  on 
the  first  morning  of  the  eleventh  century,  gave  an  im- 
pulse to  long-pent-up  thoughts  in  all  the  directions  of 
inquiry.  The  dulneos  of  unquestioning  undiscrimi- 
nating  belief  was  disturbed  by  the  freshening  breezes  of 
dissidence  and  discussion.  The  Pope  himself,  the  vene- 
rable Sylvester  the  Second,  had  acquired  all  the  wisdom 
of  the  Arabians  by  attending  the  Mohammedan  schools 
in  the  royal  city  of  Cordova.  There  he  had  learned  the 
mysteries  of  the  secret  sciences,  and  the  more  useful 
knowledge — which  he  imported  into  the  Christian  world 
— of  the  Arabic  numerals.  The  Saracenic  barbarism 
had  long  yielded  to  the  blandishments  of  the  climate 
and  soil  of  Spain ;  and  emirs  and  sultans,  in  their 
splendid  gardens  on  the  Guadalquivir,  had  been  dis- 
cussing the  most  abstruse  or  subtle  points  of  philosophy 
while  the  professed  teachers  of  Christendom  were  sunk 
in  the  depths  of  ignorance  and  Credulity.  Sylvester  had 
made  such  progress  in  the  unlawful  learning  accessible 
at  the  head-quarters  of  the  unbelievers,  that  his  simple 
contemporaries  could  only  account  for  it  by  supposing 
he  had  sold  himself  to  the  enemy  of  mankind  in  ex- 
change for  such  prodigious  information.  He  was  ac- 
cused of  the  unholy  arts  of  magic  and  necromancy;  and 
all  that  orthodoxy  could  do  to  assert  her  superiority 
over  such  acquirements  was  to  spread  the  report,  Avhich 
was  very  generally  credited,  that  when  the  years  of  the 
compact  were  expired,  the  paltering  fiend  appeared  in 
person  and  carried  off  his  debtor  from  the  midst  of  the 
affrighted  congregation,  after  a  severe  logical  discussion, 
in  which  the  father  of  lies  had  the  best  of  the  argument. 
This  was  a  conclusive  proof  of  the  danger  of  all  logical 


SCHOLARSHIP.  247 

acquirements.  But  as  time  passed  on,  and  the  darkness 
of  the  tenth  centuiy  was  more  and  more  left  behind, 
there  arose  a  race  of  men  who  were  not  terrified  by 
the  fate  of  the  philosophic  Sylvester  from  cultivating 
Uipir  understandings  to  the  highest  pitch.  Among 
those  there  were  two  who  particularly  left  their  marks 
on  the  genius  of  the  time,  and  who  had  the  strange  for- 
tune also  of  succeeding  each  other  as  Archbishops  of 
Canterbmy.  These  were  Lanfranc  and  Anselm.  When 
Lanfranc  was  still  a  monk  at  Caen,  ho  had  attracted 
to  his  prelections  more  than  four  thousand 
scholars ;  and  Anselm,  while  in  the  same  humble 
rank,  raised  the  schools  of  Bee  in  Normandy  to  a  great 
reputation.  From  these  two  men,  both  Italians  by 
birth,  the  Scholastic  Philosophy  took  its  rise.  The  old 
unreasoning  assent  to  the  doctrines  of  Christianity  had 
now  new  life  breathed  into  it  by  the  permitted  applica- 
tion of  intellect  and  reason  to  the  support  of  truth.  In 
the  darkness  and  misery  of  the  previous  century,  the 
deep  and  mysterious  dogma  of  Transubstantiation  had 
made  its  first  authoritative  appearance  in  the  Church. 
Acquiesced  in  by  the  docile  multitude,  and  accepted  by 
the  enthusiastic  and  imaginative  as  an  inexpressible  gift 
of  fresh  grace  to  mankind,  and  a  fitting  crown  and  con- 
summation of  the  daily-recurring  miracles  with  which 
the  Mother  and  Witness  of  the  truth  proved  and  main- 
tained her  mission,  it  had  been  attacked  by  Berenger  of 
Tours,  who  used  all  the  resources  of  reason  and  ingenuity 
to  demonstrate  its  unsoundness.  But  Lanfranc  came  to 
the  rescue,  and  by  the  exercise  of  a  more  vigorous  dia- 
lectic, and  the  support  of  the  great  majority  of  the 
clergy,  confuted  all  that  Berenger  advanced,  had  him 
stripped  of  his  archdeaconry  of  Angers  and  other  pre- 
ferments, and  left  him  in  such  destitution  and  disfavour 
that  the  discomfited  opponent  of  the  Real  Presence  waa 


248 


ELEVENTH   CENTURY. 


_-,-  forced  to  read  his  retractation  at  Eome,  and 

A..D.  1059.  ' 

only  expiated  the  enormity  of  his  fault  by  the 
rigorous  seclusion  of  the  remainder  of  his  life.  The 
hopeful  feature  in  this  discussion  was,  that  though  the 
influence  of  ecclesiastic  power  was  not  left  dormant,  in 
the  shape  of  temporal  ruin  and  spiritual  threats,  the 
exercise  of  those  usual  weapons  of  authority  was  no 
companied  with  attempts  at  argument  and  conviction. 
Lanfranc,  indeed,  in  the  very  writings  in  which  he  used 
his  talents  to  confute  the  heretic,  made  such  use  of  his 
reasoning  and  inductive  faculties  that  he  nearly  fell 
under  the  ban  of  heresy  himself.  He  had  the  boldness 
to  imagine  a  man  left  to  the  exercise  of  his  natural 
powers  alone,  and  bringing  observation,  argument,  and 
ratiocination  to  the  discovery  of  the  Christian  dogmas ; 
but  he  was  glad  to  purchase  his  complete  rehabilitation, 
as  champion  of  the  Church,  by  a  work  in  which  he 
admits  reason  to  the  subordinate  position  of  a  supporter 
or  commentator,  but  by  no  means  a  foundation  or  in- 
separable constituent  of  an  article  of  the  faith.  Any 
thing  was  better  than  the  blindness  and  ignorance  of 
the  previous  age;  and  questions  of  the  purest  meta- 
physics were  debated  with  a  fire  and  animosity  which 
could  scarcely  have  been  excited  by  the  greatest  worldly 
interests.  The  ^Nominalists  and  Eealists  began  their 
wordy  and  unprofitable  war,  which  after  occasional 
truces  may  at  any  moment  break  out,  as  it  has  often 
done  before,  though  it  would  now  be  confined  to  the 
professorial  chairs  in  our  universities,  and  not  exercise 
a  preponderating  influence  on  the  course  of  human 
afl'airs.  The  dispute  (as  the  names  of  the  disputants 
import)  arose  upon  the  question  as  to  whether  universal 
ideas  were  things  or  only  the  names  of  things,  and  on 
this  the  internecine  contest  went  on.  All  the  subtlety 
of  the  old  Greek  philosophies  was  introduced  into  tho 


GREGORY   THE   SEVENTH.  24» 

scholasticisms  and  word-splittings  of  those  useless 
arguers ;  and  vast  reputations,  which  have  not  yet  de« 
cayed,  were  built  on  this  very  unsubstantial  foundation. 
It  shows  how  immeasurably  the  efforts  of  the  intellect, 
even  when  misapplied,  transcend  the  greatest  triumphs 
of  military  skill,  when  we  perceive  that  in  this  age, 
which  was  illustrated  by  the  Conquest  of  England,  first 
by  the  Danes,  and  then  by  William,  by  the  marvellous 
rise  and  triumphant  progress  of  the  sons  of  Tancred  of 
flauteville,  and  by  the  startling  incidents  of  the  First 
Crusade, — the  central  figure  is  a  meagre,  hard-featured 
monk,  who  rises  from  rank  to  rank,  till  he  governs  and 
tramples  on  the  world  under  the  name  of  Gregory  the 
Seventh.  It  may  seem  to  some  people,  who  look  at  the 
present  condition  of  the  Romish  Church,  that  too  pro- 
minent a  place  is  assigned  in  these  early  centuries  to 
the  growth  and  aggrandizement  of  the  ecclesiastical 
power;  but  as  the  object  of  these  pages  is  to  point  out 
what  seems  the  main  distinguishing  feature  of  each  of 
the  periods  selected  for  separate  notice,  it  would  bo  un- 
pardonable to  pass  over  the  Papacy,  varying  in  extent 
of  power  and  pretension  at  every  period  when  it  comes 
into  view,  and  always  impressing  a  distinct  and  indivi- 
dualizing character  on  the  affairs  with  which  it  is  con- 
cerned. It  is  the  most  stable,  and  at  the  same  time  the 
most  flexible,  of  powers.  Kingdoms  and  dynasties 
flourish  and  decay,  and  make  no  permanent  mark  on 
the  succeeding  age.  The  authority  of  a  ruler  like 
Charlemagne  or  Otho  rises  in  a  full  tide,  and,  having 
reached  its  limits,  yields  to  the  irresistible  ebb.  But 
Roman  influence  knows  no  retrocession.  Even  when  its 
pretensions  are  defeated  and  its  assaults  repulsed,  it 
claims  as  de  jure  what  it  has  lost  de  facto,  and,  though  it 
were  reduced  to  the  possession  of  a  single  church, 
«rould  continue  to  issue  its  orders  to  the  habitable  globe 


-^0  ELEVENTH  CENTURY. 

Like  the  last  descendant  of  the  Great  Mogul^  who 
professed  to  rule  over  Hindostan  while  his  power  was 
limited  to  the  walls  of  his  palace  at  Delhi,  the  bearer  of 
the  Tiara  abates  no  jot  of  his  state  and  dignity  when 
every  vestige  of  his  influence  has  disappeared.  While 
ridiculed  as  a  puppet  or  pitied  as  a  sufferer  at  home,  ho 
ari-ogates  more  than  royal  power  in  regions  which  have 
long  thrown  off  his  authority,  and  announces  his  will  by 
the  voice  of  blustering  and  brazen  heralds  to  a  deaf  and 
rebellious  generation,  which  looks  on  him  with  no  more 
respect  than  the  grotesquely-dressed  conjurers  before  a 
tent-door  at  a  fair.  But  the  herald's  voice- would  have 
been  listened  to  with  respect  and  obedience  if  it  had 
been  heard  at  the  Pope's  gate  in  1073.  There  had  never 
been  such  a  pope  before,  and  never  has  been  such  a 
pope  since.  Others  have  been  arrogant  and  ambitious, 
but  no  one  has  ever  equalled  Hildebrand  in  arrogance 
and  ambition.  Strength  of  will,  also,  has  been  the 
ruling  character  of  many  of  the  pontiffs,  but  no  one  has 
ever  equalled  Hildebrand  in  the  undying  tenacity  with 
which  he  pursued  his  object.  He  was  like  Eoland,  the 
hero  of  Eoncesvalles,  who  even  in  defeat  knew  how  to 
keep  his  enemies  at  a  distance  by  blowing  upon  his 
horn.  When  Durandal  foiled  the  vanquished  Gregory, 
he  spent  his  last  breath  in  defiant  blasts  upon  his  Olifant. 

But  there  were  many  circumstances  which  not  only 
rendered  the  rise  of  such  a  person  possible,  but  made 
his  progress  easy  and  almost  unavoidable.  First  of  all, 
the  crusading  spirit  which  commenced"  with  this  century 
had  introduced  a  great  change  in  the  principles  and 
practice  of  the  higher  clergy.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose 
that  the  expedition  to  Jerusalem,  under  the  preaching 
of  Peter  the  Hermit,  which  took  place  in  109^  was  the  ■^'  ** 
earliest  manifestation  of  the  aggressive  spirit  of  the 
Christian,  as  such,  against  the  unbeliever.     A  holy  war     ^^ 


WARLIKE   BISHOPS.  251 

was  proclaimed  against  the  Saracens  of  Italy  at  an  early 
date.  An  armed  assault  upon  the  Jews,  as  descendants 
of  the  murderers  of  Christ,  had  taken  place  in  1080. 
Even  the  Norman  descent  on  England  was  considered 
by  the  more  devout  of  the  Papist  followers  in  the  light 
of  a  crusade  against  the  enemies  of  the  Cross,  as  the 
Anglo-Saxons  were  not  sufficiently  submissive  to  the 
commands  of  Eome.  Bishops,  we  saw,  were  held  in  a 
former  century  to  derogate  from  the  sanctity  of  their 
characters  when  they  fought  in  person  like  the  other 
occupants  of  fiefs.  But  the  sacred  character  which  ex- 
peditions like  those  against  Sicily  and  Salerno  gave  to 
the  struggle  made  a  great  difference  in  the  popular  esti- 
mate of  a  prelate's  sphere  of  action.  He  was  now  held 
to  be  strictly  in  the  exercise  of  his  duty  when  he  was 
slaying  an  infidel  with  the  edge  of  the  sword.  He  was 
not  considered  to  be  more  in  his  place  at  the  head  of  a 
procession  in  honour  of  a  saint  than  at  the  head  of  an 
army  of  cavaliers  destroying  the  enemies  of  the  faith. 
Warlike  skill  and  personal  courage  became  indispensable 
in  a  bishop  of  the  Church ;  and  in  Germany  these  quali- 
ties were  so  highly  prized,  that  the  inhabitants  of  a  dio- 
cese in  the  empire,  presided  over  by  a  man  of  peace  and 
holiness,  succeeded  in  getting  him  deposed  by  the  Pope 
on  the  express  ground  of  his  being  "  placable  and  far 
from  valiant."  The  epitaph  of  a  popular  bishop  was, 
that  he  was  "  good  priest  and  brave  chevalier."  The 
manners  and  feelings  of  the  camp  soon  became  disse- 
minated among  the  reverend  divines,  who  inculcated 
Christianity  with  a  battle-axe  in  their  hands.  They 
quarrelled  with  neighbouring  barons  for  portions  of 
land.  They  seized  the  incomes  of  churches  and  abbeys. 
Bishop  and  baron  strove  with  each  other  who  could  get 
aiost  for  himself  out  of  the  property  of  the  Church.  Tho 
iayman  forced  his  serfs  to  elect  his  infant  son  to  an 


252 


ELEVENTH   CENTURY. 


abbacy  or  bishopric,  and  then  pillaged  the  estate  and 
stripped  the  lower  clergy  in  the  minor's  name.  Other 
abuses  followed;  and  though  the  strictness  of  the  rule 
against  the  open  marriage  of  priests  had  long  ceased,  and 
in  some  places  the  superiority  of  wedded  incumbents  had 
been  so  recognised  that  the  appointment  of  a  pastor 
was  objected  to  unless  he  was  accompanied  by  a  wife — 
Btill,  the  letter  of  the  Church-law,  enjoining  celibacy  on 
all  orders  of  the  clergy,  had  never  been  so  generally 
neglected  as  at  the  present  time.  No  attempt  was 
made  to  conceal  the  almost  universal  infraction  of  the 
rule.  Bishops  themselves  brought  forward  their  wives 
on  occasions  of  state  and  ceremony,  who  disputed  the 
place  of  honour  with  the  wives  of  counts  and  barons. 
When  strictly  inquired  into,  however,  these  alliances 
were  not  allowed  to  have  the  effect  of  regular  matri- 
mony. They  were  looked  upon  merely  as  a  sort  of 
licensed  and  not  dishonourable  concubinage,  and  the 
children  resulting  from  them  were  deprived  of  the  rights 
of  legitimacy.  Yet  the  wealth  and  influence  of  their 
parents  made  their  exclusion  from  the  succession  to 
land  of  little  consequence.  They  were  enriched  suffi- 
ciently with  the  spoil  of  the  diocese  to  be  independent  of 
the  rights  of  heirship.  This  must  have  led,  however,  to 
many  cases  of  hardship,  when  the  feudal  baron,  tempted 
by  the  riches  of  the  neighbouring  see,  had  laid  violent 
hands  on  the  property,  and  by  bribery  or  force  procured 
his  own  nomination  as  bishop.  The  children  of  any 
marriage  contracted  after  that  time  lost  their  inherit- 
ance of  the  barony  by  the  episcopal  incapacity  of  their 
father,  and  must  have  added  to  the  general  feeling  of 
discontent  caused  by  the  junction  of  the  two  characters 
For  when  the  tyrannical  lord  became  a  prelate,  it  only 
added  the  weapons  of  ecclesiastic  domination  to  the 
baronial  armory  of  cruelty  and  extortion.     Ho  could 


NORMANS.  253 

now  withhold  all  the  blessings  of  the  Church,  as  bishop, 
unless  the  last  farthing  were  yielded  up  to  his  demands 
AS  landlord.  An  appalling  state  of  things,  when  the  re- 
fractory vassal,  who  had  escaped  the  sword,  could  be 
knocked  into  submission  by  the  crozier,  both  wielded  by 
the  same  man.  The  Church,  therefore,  in  its  highest 
offices,  had  become  as  mundane  and  ambitious  as  the 
nobility.  And  it  must  have  been  evident  to  a  far  dimmer 
sight  than  Hildebrand's,  that,  as  the  power  and  inde- 
pendence of  the  barons  had  been  gained  at  the  expense 
of  the  Crown,  the  wealth  and  possessions  of  the  bishops 
would  weaken  their  allegiance  to  the  Pope.  Sprung 
from  the  lowest  ranks  of  the  people,  the  grim-hearted 
monk  never  for  a  moment  was  false  to  his  order.  Ho 
looked  on  lords  and  kings  as  tyrants  and  oppressors,  on 
bishops  themselves  as  lording  it  over  God's  heritage  and 
requiring  to  be  held  down  beneath  the  foot  of  some 
levelling  and  irresistible  power,  which  would  show  them 
the  nothingness  of  rank  and  station ;  and  for  this  end 
he  dreamed  of  a  popedom,  universal  in  its  claims,  domi- 
neering equally  over  all  conditions  of  men — an  incarna- 
tion of  the  fiercest  democracy,  trampling  on  the  people, 
and  of  the  bitterest  republicanism,  aiming  at  more  than 
monarchical  power.  He  had  the  wrath  of  generations 
of  serfdom  rankling  in  his  heart,  and  took  a  satisfaction, 
sweetened  by  revenge,  in  bringing  low  the  haughty 
looks  of  the  proud.  And  in  these  strainings  after  the 
elevation  of  the  Papacy  he  was  assisted  by  several 
powers  on  which  he  could  securely  rely. 

The  Normans,  who  by  a  wonderful  fortune  had  made 
themselves  masters  of  England  under  the  guidance  of 
William,  were  grateful  to  the  Pope  for  the  assistance  he 
had  given  them  by  prohibiting  all  opposition  to  their 
conquest  on  the  part  of  the  English  Church.  Another 
oranch  of  Normans  were  still  more  useful  in  their  sup. 


254 


ELEVENTH   CENTURY. 


port  of  the  papal  chair.  A  body  of  pilgrims  to  J  era 
Balem,  amounting  to  only  forty  men,  had  started  from 
Scandinavia  in  1006,  and,  having  landed  at  Salerno, 
were  turned  aside  from  completing  their  journey  by  the 
equally  meritorious  occupation  of  resisting  the  Saracens 
who  were  besieging  the  town.  They  defeated  them 
with  great  slaughter,  and  were  amply  rewarded  for 
their  prowess  with  goods  and  gear.  ]N"ews  of  their 
gallantry  and  of  their  reward  reached  their  friends  and 
relations  at  home.  In  a  few  years  they  were  followed 
by  swarms  of  their  countrymen,  who  disposed  of  their 
acquisitions  in  Upper  Italy  to  the  highest  bidder,  and 
were  remunerated  by  grants  of  land  in  Naples  for 
their  exertion  on  behalf  of  Sergius  the  king.  But  in 
1037  a  fresh  body  of  adventurers  proceeded  from  the 
neighbourhood  of  Coutances  in  ITormandy,  under  the 
command  of  three  brothers  of  the  family  of  Hauteville, 
to  the  assistance  of  the  same  monarch,  and,  with  the 
usual  prudence  of  the  ISTorman  race,  when  they  had 
chased  the  enemy  from  the  endangered  territory,  made 
no  scruple  of  keeping  it  for  themselves.  Eobert,  called 
Guiscard,  or  the  Wise,  was  the  third  brother,  and  suc- 
ceeded to  the  newly-acquired  sovereignty  in  1057.  In 
a  short  time  he  alarmed  the  Pope  with  the  prospect  of 
so  unscrupulous  and  so  powerful  a  neighbour.  His 
Holiness,  therefore,  demanded  the  assistance  of  the 
German  Emperor,  and  boldly  took  the  field.  The  l^or- 
mans  were  no  whit  daunted  with  the  opposition  of  the 
Father  of  Christendom,  and  dashed  through  all  obstacles 
till  they  succeeded  in  taking  him  prisoner.  Instead  of 
treating  him  with  harshness,  and  exacting  exorbitant 
ransom,  as  would  have  been  the  action  of  a  less  saga- 
cious politician,  the  J^orman  threw  himself  on  his  knees 
beftro  the  captive  pontiif,  bewailed  his  hard  case  in 
Deing  forced  to  appear  so  contumacious  to  his  spiritual 


COUNTESS    MATILDA. 


255 


lord  and  master,  and  humbly  besought  him  to  pardon 
his  transgression,  and  accept  the  suzerainty  of  all  the 
lands  he  possessed  and  of  all  he  should  here- 
*  after  subdue.  It  was  a  delightful  surprise  to 
the  Pope,  who  immediately  ratified  all  the  proceed- 
ings of  his  repentant  son,  and  in  a  short  time  was  re- 
warded by  seeing  Apulia  and  the  great  island  of  Sicily 
held  in  homage  as  fiefs  of  St.  Peter's  chair.  From 
thenceforth  the  Italian  Normans  were  the  bulwarks  of 
the  papal  throne.  But,  more  powerful  than  the  Nor- 
mans of  England,  and  more  devoted  personally  to  the 
popes  than  the  greedy  adventurers  of  Apulia,  the 
Countess  Matilda  was  the  greatest  support  of  all  the 
pretensions  of  the  Holy  See.  Young  and  beautiful,  the 
holder  of  the  greatest  territories  in  Italy,  this  lady  was 
the  most  zealous  of  all  the  followers  of  the  Pope. 
Though  twice  married,  she  on  both  occasions  separated 
from  her  husband  to  throw  herself  with  more  undivided 
energy  into  the  interests  of  the  Church.  With  men 
and  money,  and  all  the  influence  that  her  position  as  a 
princess  and  her  charms  as  a  woman  could  give,  the 
sovereign  pontiff  had  no  enemy  to  fear  as  long  as  he 
retained  the  friendship  of  his  enthusiastic  daughter. 
Hildebrand  was  the  ruling  spirit  of  the  papal  court, 
and  was  laying  his  plans  for  future  action, 
while  the  world  was  still  scarcely  aware  of  his 
existence.  He  began,  while  only  Archdeacon  of  Eome, 
by  a  forcible  reformation  of  some  of  the  irregularities 
which  had  crept  into  the  practice  of  the  clergy,  as  a 
preparatory  step  to  making  the  clergy  dominant  over 
all  the  other  orders  in  the  State.  He  gave  orders,  in 
the  name  of  Stephen  the  Tenth,  for  every  married  priest 
to  be  displaced  and  to  be  separated  from  his  wife.  For 
this  end  ho  stirred  up  the  ignorant  fanaticism  of  the 
people,   and  encouraged  them  in  outrages   upon    the 


256 


ELEVENTH    CENTURY. 


oifending  clergy,  which  frequently  ended  in  death.  The 
virtues  of  the  cloister  had  still  a  great  hold  on  the  popu- 
lar veneration,  in  spite  of  the  notorious  vices  of  tht 
monastic  establishments,  both  male  and  female;  and 
Hildebrand's  invectives  on  the  wickedness  of  marriage, 
and  his  praises  of  the  sanctity  of  a  single  life,  were 
listened  to  with  equal  admiration.  The  secular  clergy 
were  forced  to  adopt  the  unsocial  and  demoralizing 
principles  of  their  monkish  rivals ;  and  when  all  family 
affections  were  made  sinful,  and  the  feelings  of  the 
pastor  concentrated  on  the  interests  of  his  profession, 
the  popes  had  secured,  in  the  whole  body  of  the  Church, 
the  unlimited  obedience  and  blind  support  which  had 
hitherto  been  the  characteristic  of  the  monastic  orders. 
With  the  assistance  of  the  warlike  I^Tormans,  the  wealth 
and  influence  of  the  Countess  Matilda,  the  adhesion  of 
the  Church  to  his  schemes  of  aggrandizement,  he  felt  it 
time  to  assume  in  public  the  power  he  had  exercised  so 
long  in  the  subordinate  position  of  counsellor  of  the 
popes;  and  the  monk  seated  himself  on  what  he  con- 
Bidered  the  highest  of  earthly  thrones,  and  immediately 
the  contest  between  the  temporal  and  spiritual 
*  powers  began.  The  King  of  France  (Philip  the 
First)  and  the  Emperor  of  Germany  (Henry  the  Fourth) 
were  both  of  disreputable  life,  and  offered  an  easy  mark 
for  the  assaults  of  the  fiery  pontiff.  He  threatened 
and  reprimanded  them  for  simony  and  disobediencCj 
proclaimed  his  authority  over  kings  and  princes  as  a 
fact  which  no  man  could  dispute  without  impiety,  and 
had  the  inward  pleasure  of  seeing  the  proudest  of  the 
nobles,  and  finally  the  most  powerful  of  the  sove- 
reigns, of  Europe,  forced  to  obey  his  mandates.  The 
pent-up  hatred  of  his  race  and  profession  was  gratified 
by  the  abasement  of  birth  and  power. 

The  struggle  with  the  Empire  was  on  the  subject  of 


STRUGGLE   BETWEEN    POPE    AND    EMPEROR.  -^^ 

investiture.  The  successors  of  Charlemagne  had  always 
retained  a  voice  in  the  appointmei>t  of  the  bishops  and 
Church  dignitaries  in  their  states ;  they  had  even  fre- 
quently nominated  to  the  See  of  Rome,  as  to  the  other 
bishoprics  in  their  dominions.  The  present  wearer  of 
the  iron  crown  had  displaced  three  contending  popes, 
who  were  disturbing  the  peace  of  the  city  by  their 
ferocious  quarrels,  and  had  appointed  others  in  their 
room.  There  was  no  murmur  of  opposition  to  their 
appointment.  They  were  pious  and  venerable  menj 
and  of  each  of  them  the  inscrutable  Hildebrand  had 
managed  to  make  himself  the  confidential  adviser,  and 
in  reality  the  guide  and  master.  Even  in  his  own  case 
he  waited  patiently  till  he  had  secured  the  emperor's 
legal  ratification  of  his  election,  and  then,  armed  with 
legitimacy,  and  burning  with  smothered  indignation,  he 
kicked  down  the  ladder  by  which  he  had  risen,  and 
wrote  an  insulting  letter  to  the  emperor,  commanding 
him  to  abstain  from  simony,  and  to  renounce  the  right 
of  investiture  by  the  ring  and  cross.  These,  he  main- 
tained, were  the  signs  of  spiritual  dignity,  and  their 
oestowal  was  inherent  in  the  Pope.  The  time  for  the 
message  was  admirably  chosen ;  for  Henry  was  engaged 
in  a  hard  struggle  for  life  and  crown  with  the  Saxons 
and  Thuringians,  who  were  in  open  revolt.  Henry 
promised  obedience  to  the  pontiff's  wish,  but  when  his 
enemies  were  defeated  he  withdrew  his  concession. 
The  Pope  thundered  a  sentence  of  excommunication 
against  him,  released  his  subjects  from  their  oath  of 
fealty,  and  pronounced  him  deprived  of  the  throne. 
The  emperor  was  not  to  be  left  behind  in  the  race  of 
1076  objurgation.  He  summoned  his  nobles  and  pre- 
lates to  a  council  at  "Worms,  and  pronounced 
sentence  of  deprivation  on  the  Pope.  Then  arose  such 
a  storm  against  the  unfortunate  Henry  as  only  religious 


Z58 


ELEVENTH   CENTURY. 


differences  can  create.  His  subjects  had  been  oppressed, 
his  nobility  insulted^  his  clergy  impoverished,  and  all 
classes  of  his  people  were  glad  of  the  opportunity  of 
hiding  their  hatred  of  his  oppressions  under  the  cloak 
of  regard  for  the  interests  of  religion.  He  was  forced 
to  yield;  and,  crossing  the  Alps  in  the  middle  of  winter^ 
he  presented  himself  at  the  castle  of  Canossa.  Here 
the  Pope  displayed  the  humbleness  and  generosity  of 
his  Christian  character,  by  leaving  the  wretched  man 
three  days  and  nights  in  the  outer  court,  shivering  with 
cold  and  barefoot,  while  His  Holiness  and  the  Countess 
Matilda  were  comfortably  closeted  within.  And  after 
this  unheard-of  degradation,  all  that  could  be  wrung 
from  the  hatred  of  the  inexorable  monk  was  a  promise 
that  the  suppliant  should  be  tried  with  justice,- and  that, 
if  he  succeeded  in  proving  his  innocence,  he  should  be 
reinstated  on  his  throne;  but  if  he  were  found  guilty, 
he  should  be  punished  with  the  utmost  rigour  of  eccle- 
siastical law. 

Common  sense  and  good  feeling  were  revolted  by  this 
unexampled  insolence.  Friends  gathered  round  Henry 
when  the  terms  of  his  sentence  were  heard.  The 
Romans  themselves,  who  had  hitherto  been  blindly  sub- 
missive, were  indignant  at  the  presumption  of  their 
bishop.  None  continued  faithful  except  the  imper- 
turbable Countess  Matilda.  He  was  still  to  her  the 
representative  of  divine  goodness  and  superhuman 
power.  But  her  troops  were  beaten  and  her  money 
was  exhausted  in  the  holy  quarrel.  Eobert  Guiscard, 
indeed,  came  to  the  rescue,  and  rewarded  himself  for 
delivering  the  Pope  by  sacking  the  city  of  Eome.  Half 
the  houses  were  burned,  and  half  the  population  killed 
cr  sold  as  slaves.  It  was  from  amidst  the  desolation 
his  ambition  had  caused  that  the  still-unsubdued  Hilde- 
brand  was  guarded  by  the  Normans  to  the  citadel  of 


DEATH    OF   niLDEBRAND. 


25S 


Salerno,  and  there  he  died,  issuing  his  orders  and  curse? 
to  his  latest  hour,  and  boasting  with  his  last  breath  that 
"he  had  loved  righteousness  and  hated  iniquity,  and 
that  therefore  he  expired  in  exile."  After  this 
'  man's  throwing  off  the  mask  of  moderation 
under  which  his  predecessors  had  veiled  their  claims, 
the  world  was  no  longer  left  in  doubt  of  the  aims  and 
objects  of  the  spiritual  power.  There  seems  almost  a 
taint  of  insanity  in  the  extravagance  of  his  demands. 
In  the  published  collection  of  his  maxims  we  see  the  full 
extent  of  the  theological  tyranny  he  had  in  view. 
"There  is  but  one  name  in  the  world,"  we  read;  "and 
that  is  the  Pope's.  He  only  can  use  the  ornaments  of 
empire.  All  princes  ought  to  kiss  his  feet.  He  alone 
can  nominate  or  displace  bishops  and  assemble  or  dis- 
solve councils.  Nobody  can  judge  him.  His  mere 
election  constitutes  him  a  saint.  He  has  never  erred, 
and  never  shall  err  in  time  to  come.  He  can  depose 
princes  and  release  subjects  from  their  oaths  of  fidelity." 
Yet,  in  spite  of  the  wildness  of  this  language,  the  igno- 
rance of  the  period  was  so  great,  and  the  relations  of 
European  nations  so  hostile,  that  the  most  daring  of 
these  assumptions  found  supporters  either  in  the  super- 
stitious veneration  of  the  peoples  or  the  enmity  and 
interests  of  the  princes.  The  propounder  of  those 
amazing  propositions  was  apparently  defeated,  and  died 
disgraced  and  hated;  but  his  successors  were  careful 
not  to  withdraw  the  most  untenable  of  his  claims,,  even 
while  they  did  not  bring  them  into  exercise.  They 
lay  in  an  armory,  carefully  stored  and  guarded,  to  be 
brought  out  according  to  the  exigencies  either  of  the 
papal  chair  itself,  or  of  the  king  or  emperor  who  for  the 
moment  was  in  possession  of  the  person  of  the  Popo. 
None  of  the  great  potentates  of  Europe,  therefore,  was 
anxious  to  diminish  a  power  which  might  be  employed 


260  ELEVENTH   CENTURY. 

for  his  own  advantage,  and  all  of  them  by  turns  en. 
couraged  the  aggressions  of  the  Papacy,  with  a  short- 
sighted wisdom,  to  be  an  instrument  of  offence  against 
their  enemies.  Little  encouragement,  indeed,  was  of- 
fered at  this  time  to  opposition  to  the  spiritual  despot. 
Though  Hildebrand  had  died  a  refugee,  it  was  remarked 
with  pious  awe  that  Henry  the  Fourth,  his  rival  and 
opponent,  was  punished  in  a  manner  which  showed  the 
highest  displeasure  of  Heaven.  His  children,  at  the 
instigation  of  the  Pope,  rebelled  against  him.  He  waa 
conquered  in  battle  and  taken  prisoner  by  his  youngest 
son.  He  was  stripped  of  all  his  possessions,  and  at  last 
so  destitute  and  forsaken  that  he  begged  for  a  sub- 
chanter's  place  in  a  village  church  for  the  sake  of  its 
wretched  salary,  and  died  in  such  extremity  of 
want  and  desolation  that  hunger  shortened  his 
days.  For  five  years  his  body  was  left  without  the 
decencies  of  interment  in  a  cellar  in  the  town  of  Spires. 
But  an  immense  movement  was  now  to  take  place  in 
the  European  mind,  which  had  the  greatest  influence 
on  the  authority  of  Eome.  A  crusade  against  the 
enemies  of  the  faith  was  proclaimed  in  the  year 
'  1095,  and  from  all  parts  of  Europe  a  great  cry 
of  approval  was  uttered  in  all  tongues,  for  it  hit  the 
right  chord  in  the  ferocious  and  superstitious  heart  of 
the  world ;  and  it  was  felt  that  the  great  battle  of  the 
Cross  and  the  Crescent  was  most  fitly  to  be  decided  for- 
ever on  the  soil  of  the  Holy  Land. 

From  the  very  beginning  of  this  century  the  thought 
of  armed  intervention  in  the  affairs  of  Palestine  had 
been  present  in  the  general  mind.  Religious  difference 
had  long  been  ready  to  take  the  form  of  open  war. 
As  the  Church  strengthened  and  settled  into  more  dog- 
matic unity,  the  desire  to  convert  by  force  and  retain 
within  the  fold  by  penalty  and  proscription  had  in- 
creased.   As  yet  some  reluctance  was  felt  to  put  a  pro- 


PETER   THE   HERMIT.  2W 

fessing  Christian  to  death  on  merely  a  difference  of 
doctrine,  but  with  the  open  gainsayers  of  the  faith  no 
parley  could  be  held.  Thousands,  in  addition  to  their 
religious  animosities,  had  personal  injuries  to  avenge; 
for  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem  was  already  in  full  favour, 
and  the  weary  wayfarers  had  to  complain  of  the  hos- 
tility of  the  turbaned  possessors  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre, 
ftnd  the  indignities  and  peril  to  which  they  were  ex- 
posed the  moment  they  came  within  the  infidel's  do- 
main. Why  should  the  unbelievers  be  allowed  any 
longer  to  retain  the  custody  of  such  inherently  Chris- 
tian territories  as  the  Mount  of  Olives  and  the  Garden 
of  Gethsemane  ?  Why  should  the  unbaptized  followers 
of  Mohammed,  those  children  of  perdition,  pollute  with 
hostile  feet  the  sacred  ground  which  had  been  the  wit- 
ness of  so  many  miracles  and  still  furnished  so  many 
relics  which  manifested  superhuman  power?  Besides, 
what  was  the  wealth  of  other  cities — their  gold  and 
precious  jewels — to  the  store  of  incalculable  riches  con- 
tained in  the  very  stones  and  woodwork  of  the  metro- 
polis and  cradle  of  the  faith  ?  Bones  of  martyrs — 
garments  of  saints — nails  of  the  cross — thorns  of  the 
crown — were  all  lying  ready  to  be  gathered  up  by  the 
faithful  priesthood  who  would  lead  the  expedition. 
And  who  could  be  held  responsible,  in  this  world  or  the 
next,  for  any  sins,  however  grievous,  who  had  washed 
them  out  by  purifying  the  floors  of  Zion  with  the  blood 
of  slaughtered  Saracens  and  saying  prayers  and  kneel- 
ing in  contemplation  within  sight  of  the  Sepulchre  itself? 
So  Peter  the  Hermit,  an  enthusiast  who  preached  a  holy 
war,  was  listened  to  as  if  he  spake  with  the  tongues  of 
angels.  The  ravings  of  his  lunacy  had  a  prodigious 
effect  on  all  classes  and  in  all  lands;  and  suddenly  there 
was  gathered  together  a  confused  rabble  of  pilgrims, 
armed  in  every  variety  of  fashion — ^princes  and  beg- 
gars, robbers  and  adventurers — the  scum  of  great  cities 


262 


ELEVENTH   CENTURY. 


iind  the  simple-hearted  peasantry  from  distant  farms—* 
upwards  of  three  hundred  thousand  in  number,  all 
pouring  down  towards  the  seaports  and  anxious  to 
cross  over  to  the  land  where  so  many  high  hopes  were 
placed.  Yast  numbers  of  this  multitude  found  their 
way  from  France  through  Italy;  and  luckily  for  Urban 
the  Second — the  fifth  in  succession  from  Gregory— 
they  took  the  opportunity  of  paying  a  visit  to  the  city 
of  Eome,  scarcely  less  venerable  in  their  eyes  than  Jeru- 
salem itself  They  were  the  soldiers  of  the  Cross,  and 
in  that  character  felt  bound  to  pay  a  more  immediate 
submission  to  the  Chief  of  Christianity  than  to  their 
native  kings.  They  found  the  city  divided  between 
two  rivals  for  the  tiara,  and,  having  decided  in  favour 
of  Urban,  chased  away  the  anti-pope  who  was  ap- 
pointed by  the  Imperial  choice.  Terrified  at  the  acces- 
sion of  such  powerful  supporters,  the  Germans  were 
withdrawn  from  Italy,  and  Urban  felt  that  the  claims 
of  Hildebrand  were  not  incapable  of  realization  if  he 
could  get  quit  of  unruly  barons  and  obstinate  monarchs 
by  engaging  them  in  a  distant  and  ruinous  expedition. 
It  needed  little  to  spread  the  flame  of  fanaticism  over 
the  whole  of  Christendom.  The  accounts  given  of  this 
first  Crusade  transcend  the  wildest  imaginings  of  ro- 
mance. An  indiscriminate  multitude  of  all  nations  and 
tongues  seemed  impelled  by  some  irresistible  impulse 
towards  the  East.  Ostensibly  engaged  in  a  religious 
service,  enriched  with  promises  and  absolutions  from 
the  Pope,  giving  up  all  their  earthly  possessions,  and 
^Ued  with  the  one  idea  of  liberating  the  Holy  Land,  it 
might  have  been  expected  that  the  sobriety  and  order 
of  their  march  would  have  been  characteristic  of  such 
elevating  aspirations.  But  the  infamy  of  their  behaviour, 
their  debauchery,  irregularity,  and  dishonesty,  have 
never  been  equalled  by  the  basest  and  most  degraded  of 
mankind.     Like  a  flood  they  poured  through  the  landk 


SECOND   CRUSADE. 


268 


of  Italy,  Bohemia,  and  Germany,  polluting  the  cities 
with  their  riotous  lives,  and  poisoning  the  air  with  the 
festering  corruption  of  their  innumerable  dead.  They 
at  last  found  shipping  from  the  ports,  and  presented 
themselves,  drunk  with  fanatical  pride,  and  maddened 
with  the  sufferings  they  had  undergone,  before  the 
Bstonished  people  of  Constantinople.  That  enervated 
find  over-civilized  population  looked  with  disgust  on  the 
unruly  mass.  Of  the  vast  multitudes  who  had  started 
under  the  guidance  of  Peter  the  Hermit,  not  more  than 
20,000  survived ;  and  of  these  none  found  their  way  to 
the  object  of  their  search.  The  Turks,  who  had  by 
this  time  obtained  the  mastery  of  Asia,  cut  them  in 
pieces  when  they  had  left  the  shelter  of  Constantinople, 
and  Alexis  Comnenus,  the  Grecian  emperor,  had  little 
hope  of  aid  against  the  Mohammedan  invaders  from  the 
unruly  levies  of  Europe. 

But  in  the  following  year  a  new  detachment  made 
their  appearance  in  his  states.  This  was  the  second 
ban,  or  crusade  of  the  knights  and  barons.  Better  re- 
gulated in  its  military  organization  than  the  other,  it 
presented  the  same  astonishing  scenes  of  debauchery 
and  vice ;  and  dividing,  for  the  sake  of  sustenance,  into 
four  armies,  and  taking  four  different  routes,  they  at 
length,  in  greatly-diminished  numbers,  but  with  un- 
abated hope  and  energy,  presented  themselves  before 
the  walls  of  Constantinople.  This  was  no  mob  like 
their  famished  and  fainting  predecessors.  All  the  gallant 
lords  of  Europe  were  here,  inspired  by  knightly  courage 
and  national  rivalries  to  distinguish  themselves  in  fight 
and  council.  Of  these  the  best-known  were  Godfrey  of 
Bouillon,  Baldwyn  of  Flanders,  Eobert  of  Normandy, 
(William  the  Conqueror's  eldest  son,)  Hugh  the  Great, 
Count  of  Yermandois,  and  Eaymond  of  St.  Gilles.  Six 
hundred  thousand  men  had  left  their  homes,  with  innu- 
merable attendants — ^women,  and  jugglers,  and  servants, 


26*  ELEVENTH   CENTURY. 

and  workmen  of  all  kinds.  Tens  of  thousands  perished 
by  the  way;  others  established  themselves  in  the  cities 
on  their  route  to  keep  up  the  communication ;  and  at 
last  the  Genoese  and  Pisan  vessels  conveyed  to  the 
Golden  Horn  the  strength  of  all  Europe,  the  hardy  sur- 
vivors of  all  the  perils  of  that  unexampled  march — few 
indeed  in  number,  but  burning  with  zeal  and  bravery. 
Alexis  lost  no  time  in  diverting  their  dangerous  strength 
from  his  own  realms.  He  let  them  loose  upon  Mcea, 
and  when  it  yielded  to  their  valour  he  had  the  clever- 
ness to  outwit  the  Christian  warriors,  and  claimed  the 
city  as  his  possession.  On  pursuing  their  course,  they 
found  themselves,  after  a  victory  over  the  Turks  at 
Doryl83um,  in  the  great  Plain  of  Phrygia.  Hunger, 
thirst,  the  extremity  of  heat,  and  the  difficulty  of  the 
march,  brought  confusion  and  dismay  into  their  ranks. 
All  the  horses  died.  Knights  and  chevaliers  were  seen 
mounted  on  asses,  and  even  upon  oxen ;  and  the  baggage 
was  packed  upon  goats,  and  not  unfrequently  on  swine 
and  dogs.  Thirst  Avas  fatal  to  five  hundred  in  a  single 
day.  Quarrels  between  the  nationalities  added  to  these 
calamities.  Lorrains  and  Italians,  the  men  of  Normandy 
and  of  Provence,  were  at  open  feud.  And  yet,  in  spite 
of  these  drawbacks,  the  great  procession  advanced. 
Baldwyn  and  Tancred  succeeded  in  getting  possession 
of  the  town  of  Edessa,  on  the  Euphrates,  and  opened  a 
,„„„  communication  with  the  Christians  of  Armenia. 

A.D.  1098.  .  .        .      ,  1     . 

The  siege  of  Antioch  was  their  next  operation, 
and  the  luxuries  of  the  soil  and  climate  were  more  fatal 
to  the  Crusaders  than  want  and  pain  had  been.  On  the 
rich  banks  of  the  Orontes,  and  in  the  groves  of  Daphne, 
they  lost  the  remains  of  discipline  and  self-command 
and  gave  themselves  up  to  the  wildest  excesses.  But 
with  the  winter  their  enjoyment  came  to  an  end.  Their 
camp  was  flooded;  they  suffered  the  extremities  of 
famine ;  and  when  there  were  no  more  horses  and  im- 


ANTIOCH   TAKEN.  266 

pure  animals  to  eat,  they  satiated  their  hunger  on  the 
bodies  of  their  slaughtered  enemies.  Help,  however, 
was  at  hand,  or  they  must  have  perished  to  the  last 
man.  Bohemund  cwrupted  the  fidelity  of  a  renegade 
officer  in  Antioch,  and,  availing  themselves  of  a  dark 
and  stormy  night,  they  scaled  the  walls  with  ladders, 
and  rushed  into  the  devoted  city,  shouting  the  Crusaders* 
war-cry : — "  It  is  the  will  of  God  I"  and  Antioch  became 
a  Christian  princedom.  But  not  without  difficulty  was 
this  new  possession  retained.  The  Turks,  under  the 
orders  of  Kerboga,  surrounded  it  with  two  hundred 
thousand  men.  There  was  neither  entrance  nor  exit 
possible,  and  the  worst  of  their  previous  sufferings 
began  to  be  renewed.  But  Heaven  came  to  the  rescue. 
A  monk  of  the  name  of  Peter  Bartholomew  dreamt 
that  under  the  great  altar  of  the  church  would  be  found 
the  spear  which  pierced  the  Saviour  on  the  cross.  The 
precious  weapon  rewarded  their  toil  in  digging,  and 
armed  with  this  the  Christian  charge  was  irresistible, 
and  the  Turks  were  cut  in  pieces  or  dispersed.  Instead 
of  making  straight  for  Jerusalem,  they  lingered  six 
months  longer  in  Antioch,  suffering  from  plague  and  the 
fatigues  they  had  undergone.  When  at  last  the  forward 
order  was  given,  a  remnant,  consisting  of  fifty  thousand 
men  out  of  all  the  original  force,  began  the  march.  As 
they  got  nearer  the  object  of  their  search,  and  recog- 
nised the  places  commemorated  in  Holy  Writ,  their  en- 
thusiasm knew  no  bounds.  The  last  elevation  was  at 
length  surmounted,  and  Jerusalem  lay  in  full  view.  <^  O 
blessed  Jesus,"  cries  a  monk  who  was  present,  "  when 
thy  Holy  City  was  seen,  what  tears  fell  from  our  eyes  !" 
Loud  shouts  were  raised  of  "Jerusalem!  Jerusalem! 
God  wills  it!  God  wills  it!"  They  stretched  out  their 
hands,  fell  upon  their  knees,  and  embraced  the  conse- 
crated ground  But  Jerusalem  was  yet  in  the  hands  of 
12 


^66  ELEVENTH  CENTURY. 

the  Saracens,  and  the  sword  must  open  their  way  into 
:ts  sacred  bounds.  The  governor  had  offered  to  admit 
the  pilgrims  within  the  walls,  but  in  their  peaceful  dress 
and  merely  as  visitors.  This  they  refused,  and  deter- 
mined to  wrest  it  from  its  unbelieving  lords.  On  the 
16th  of  July,  1099,  they  found  that  their  situation  was 
no  longer  tenable,  and  that  they  must  conquer  or  give 
up  the  siege.  The  brook  Kedron  was  dried  up,  the  sun 
poured  irpon  them  with  unendurable  heat,  their  pro- 
visions were  exhausted,  and  in  agonies  of  despair  as 
well  as  of  military  ardour  they  gave  the  final  assault. 
The  struggle  was  long  and  doubtful.  At  length  the 
Crusaders  triumphed.  Tancred  and  Godfrey  were  the 
first  to  leap  into  the  devoted  town.  Their  soldiers  fol- 
lowed, and  filled  every  street  with  slaughter.  The  Mos- 
que of  Omar  was  vigorously  defended,  and  an  indiscri- 
minate massacre  of  Mussulmans  and  Jews  filled  the 
whole  place  with  blood.  In  the  mosque  itself  the  stream 
of  gore  was  up  to  the  saddle-girths  of  a  horse.  The  on- 
slaught was  occasionally  suspended  for  a  while,  to  allow 
the  pious  conquerors  to  go  barefoot  and  unarmed  to 
kneel  at  the  Holy  Sepulchre ;  and,  this  act  of  worship 
done,  they  returned  to  their  ruthless  occupation,  and 
continued  the  work  of  extermination  for  a  whole  week. 
The  depopulated  and  reeking  town  was  added  to  the 
domains  of  Christendom,  and  the  kingdom  of  Jerusalem 
was  offered  to  Godfrey  of  Bouillon.  With  a  modesty 
befitting  the  most  Christian  and  noble-hearted  of  the 
Crusaders,  Godfrey  contented  himself  with  the  humbler 
name  of  Baron  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre ;  and  with  three 
hundred  knights — which  were  all  that  remained  to  him 
when  that  crowning  victory  had  set  the  othei  survivors 
at  liberty  to  revisit  their  native  lands — he  established  a 
standing  garrison  in  the  captured  city,  and  anxiously 
awaited  reinforcements  from  the  warlike  spirits  they 
had  left  at  home. 


TWELFTH  CENTURY. 


lEmperocis  of  (Bermaitj).      iHmpcroris  of  tje  lEagt. 

▲.D.  A.D. 

Henry  IV. — {cont.)  Alexis  I. — {cont) 

1106,  Henry  V.  1118.  John. 

1143.  Manuel. 
House  of  Suabia.  ^^gg    andronicus  I. 

1138.  Conrad  III.  1185.  Isaac  II.,  (the  Angel) 

1152.  Frederick  Barbarossa.     1195.  Alexis  III. 
1190.  Henry  VI. 

1198.  Philip  and  Otho  IV.,  (of  |^i„gg  j,f  jFrattW. 

Brunswick.)  ^  -r      ,        x 

Philip  I. — {cont.) 

^  -r.     .     ^         1108.  Louis  VI. 

itings  Of  iSnfilantr.      ^,,j^j^,,,,yu. 

1100.  Henry  I.  ^-^^q   p^jj^^jp  Augustus. 

1135.  Stephen. 

1154.  Henry  II.  ^^^^  ^^  Scotlanb. 

1189.  Richard  1. 

,,^„    ^  I1G5.  William. 

1199.  John. 

1147.  Second  Crusade,  led  by  Louis  VII.  of  France. 
1189.  Third  Crusade,   led  by   Frederick    Barbarossa,    Philip 
Augustus,  and  Eichard  of  England. 

Gutters, 

Bernard,  (1091-1153,)  Becket,  (1119-1170,)  Eustathius, 
TuEODORUs,  Balsamon,  Peter  Lombard,  William  of  jVIaljieS' 
SUUY,  (109G-1143.) 


THE  TWELFTH  CENTURl 

ELEVATION    01'    LEARNING — POWER     OF    THE    CHURCH- 
THOMAS    X-BECKETT. 

The  effect  jf  the  first  Crusade  had  been  so  prodigious 
that  Europe  was  forced  to  pause  to  recover  from  its  ex- 
haustion. More  than  half  a  million  had  left  their  homes 
in  1095 ;  ten  thousand  are  supposed  to  have  returned ; 
three  hundred  were  left  with  Godfrey  in  the  Christian 
city  of  Jerusalem;  and  what  had  become  of  all  the 
rest  ?  Their  bones  were  whitening  all  the  roads  that  led 
to  the  Holy  Land;  small  parties  of  them  must  have 
settled  in  despair  or  weariness  in  towns  and  villages  on 
their  way;  many  were  sold  into  slavery  by  the  rapacity 
of  the  feudal  lords  whose  lands  they  traversed;  and 
when  the  madness  of  the  time  had  originated  a  Crusade 
of  Children,  and  ninety  thousand  boys  of  ten  or  twelve 
years  of  age  had  commenced  their  journey,  singing 
hymns  and  anthems,  and  hoping  to  conquer  the  infidels 
with  the  spiritual  arms  of  innocence  and  prayer,  the 
whole  band  melted  away  before  they  reached  the  coast. 
Barons,  and  counts,  and  bishops,  and  dukes,  all  swooped 
down  upon  the  devoted  march,  and  before  many  weeks* 
journeying  was  achieved  the  Crusade  was  brought  to  a 
close.  Most  of  the  children  had  died  of  fatigue'  or  star- 
vation, and  the  survivors  had  been  seized  as  legitimate 
prey  and  sold  as  slaves. 

Meantime  the  brave  and  heroic  Godfrey — ^the  true 
hero  of  the  expedition,  for  he  elevated  the  ordinary 
rirtues  of  knighthood  and  feudalism  into  the  nobler 

269 


no 


TWELFTH   CENTURY. 


feelings  of  generosity  and  romance — gained  tlie  objecl 
of  his  earthly  ambition.  Having  prayed  at  the  sepul- 
chre, and  cleansed  the  temple  from  the  pollution  of  the 
unbelievers'  presence,  wearied  with  all  his  labours,  and 
feeling  that  his  task  was  done,  he  sank  into  deep 
despondency  and  died.  Yolunteers  in  small 
numbers  had  occasionally  gone  eastward  to  support  the 
Cross  Ambition,  thoughtlessness,  guilt,  and  fanaticism 
sent  their  representatives  to  aid  the  conqueror  of  Judca; 
and  his  successors  found  themselves  strong  enough  to 
bid  defiance  to  the  Turkish  power.  They  carried  all 
their  Western  ideas  along  with  them.  They  had  their 
feudal  holdings  and  knightly  quarrels.  The  most  vene- 
rated names  in  Holy  Writ  were  desecrated  by  unseemly 
disputes  or  the  most  frivolous  associations.  The  com- 
bination, indeed,  of  their  native  habits  and  their  new 
acquisitions  might  have  moved  them  to  laughter,  if  the 
men  of  the  twelfth  century  had  been  awake  to  the  ridi- 
culous. There  was  a  Prince  of  Galilee,  a  Marquis  of 
Joppa,  a  Baron  of  Sidon,  a  Marquis  of  Tyre.  Our  own 
generation  has  renewed  the  strange  juxtaposition  of  the 
East  and  West  by  the  language  employed  in  steamboats 
and  railways.  Trains  will  soon  cross  the  Desert  with 
warning  whistles  and  loud  jets  of  steam  and  all  the 
phraseology  of  an  English  line.  For  many  years  the 
waters  of  the  mysterious  Eed  Sea  have  been  dashed 
into  foam  by  paddles  made  in  Liverpool  or  Glasgow. 
But  these  are  visitors  of  a  very  different  kind  from  Bo- 
hemund  and  Baldwyn.  Baldwyn,  indeed,  seemed  less  in- 
clined than  his  companions  to  carry  his  European  train- 
ing to  its  full  extent.  He  Orientalized  himself  in  a  small 
way,  perhaps  in  imitation  of  Alexander  the  Great,  and, 
dressed  in  the  long  flowing  robes  of  the  country,  he 
made  his  attendants  serve  him  with  prostrations,  and 
'ilmost  with  worship.     He  married  a  daughter  of  the 


MOHAMMEDAN   FAITH.  271 

land,  and  in  other  respects  endeavoured  to  iugrariato 
himself  with  the  Saracens  by  treating  them  with  kind- 
ness and  consideration.  The  bravery  of  those  warriors 
of  the  Desert  endeared  them  to  the  rough-handed  barons 
of  the  West.  It  was  impossible  to  believe  that  men 
with  that  one  pre-eminent  virtue  could  be  so  utterly 
hateful  as  they  had  been  represented ;  and  when  the  in- 
tercourse between  the  races  became  more  unrestrained, 
even  the  religious  asperities  of  the  Crusaders  became 
mitigated,  they  found  so  many  points  of  resemblance 
between  their  faiths.  There  was  not  an  honour  which 
the  Christian  paid  to  the  Virgin  which  was  not  yielded 
by  the  Mohammedan  to  Fatima.  All  the  doctrines  of 
jhe  Christian  creed  found  their  counterparts  in  the  pro- 
fessions of  the  followers  of  the  Law.  Allah  was  an  incar- 
nation of  the  Deity;  and  even  the  mystery  of  the 
Trinity  was  not  indistinctly  seen  in  the  legend  of  the 
three  rays  which  darted  from  the  idea  of  Mohammed  in 
the  mind  of  the  Creator.  While  this  community  of 
sentiment  softened  the  animosity  of  the  crusading 
leaders  towards  their  enemies,  a  still  greater  community 
of  suffering  and  danger  softened  their  feelings  towards 
their  followers  and  retainers.  In  that  scarcity  of 
knights  and  barons,  the  value  of  a  serfs  arm  or  a 
mechanic's  skill  was  gratefully  acknowledged.  There 
had  been  many  mutual  kindnesses  between  the  two 
classes  all  through  those  tedious  and  blood-stained 
journeys  and  desperate  fights.  A  peasant  had  brought 
water  to  a  wounded  lord  when  he  lay  fainting  on  the 
burning  soil ;  a  workman  had  had  the  revelation  of  the 
true  crown :  they  were  no  longer  the  property  and 
Biaves  of  the  noble,  who  considered  them  beings  of  a 
different  blood,  but  fellow-soldiers,  fellow-sufferers,  fel- 
low-Christians. They  were  not  spoken  of  in  the  insult* 
ng  language  of  the  West,  and  called  ^'  our  thralls,"  "our 


m 


TWELFTH   CENTURY. 


slaves,"  "  our  bondsmen ;"  at  the  worst  they  were  called 
"  our  poor/'  and  lifted  by  that  word  into  the  quahty  of 
brothers  and  men.  The  precepts  of  the  gospel  in  favour 
of  the  humble  and  suifering  were  felt  for  the  first  time 
to  have  an  application  to  the  men  w^ho  had  toiled  on 
their  lands  and  laboured  in  their  workshops,  but  who 
were  now  their  support  in  the  shock  of  battle,  and  com- 
panions  when  the  victory  was  won.  Only  they  were 
poor ;  they  had  no  lands ;  they  had  no  arms  upon  their 
shields.  So  Baldwyn  gave  them  large  tracts  of  country; 
and  they  became  vassals  and  feudatories  for  fertile  fields 
near  Jericho  and  rich  farms  on  the  Jordan.  They  were 
gentlemen  by  the  strength  of  their  own  right  hands,  as 
the  fathers  of  their  lords  and  suzerains  had  been. 

But  the  amalgamation  of  race  and  condition  was  not 
earned  on  in  the  East  more  surely  or  more  extensively 
than  in  the  West.  The  expenses  of  preparing  for  the 
pilgrimage  had  impoverished  the  richest  of  the  lords  of 
the  soil.  They  had  been  forced  to  borrow  money  and 
to  mortgage  their  estates  to  the  burghers  of  the  great 
commercial  towns,  which,  quietly  and  unobserved,  had 
spread  themselves  in  many  parts  of  France  and  Italy. 
Genoa  had  already  attained  such  a  height  of  prosperity 
that  she  could  furnish  vessels  for  the  conveyance  of  half 
the  army  of  the  Crusade.  In  return  for  her  cargoes  of 
knights  and  fighting-men,  she  brought  back  the  wealth 
of  the  East, — silks,  and  precious  stones,  and  spices,  and 
vessels  of  gold  and  silver.  The  necessities  of  the  time 
made  the  money-holder  powerful,  and  the  men  who 
swung  the  hammer,  and  shaped  the  sword,  and  em- 
broidered the  banner,  and  wove  the  tapestry,  indis- 
pensable. And  what  hold,  except  kindness,  and  privi- 
lege, and  grants  of  land,  had  the  baron  on  the  skilful 
smith  or  the  ingenious  weaver  who  could  carry  his  skill 
tnd  energy  wherever  he  chose  ?  Besides,  the  multitudes 


GAIN    OF   THE   TOWNS. 


278 


who  had  been  carried  away  from  the  pursuits  of  indus- 
try to  fall  at  the  siege  of  Antioch  or  perish  by  thirst  in 
the  Desert  had  given  a  greatly-increased  value  to  their 
fellow-labourers  left  at  home.  While  the  castle  became 
deserted,  and  all  the  pomp  of  feudalism  retreated  from 
its  crumbling  walls,  the  village  which  had  grown  in 
safety  under  its  protection  flourished  as  much  as  ever — ^ 
flourished,  indeed,  so  much  that  it  rapidly  became  a 
town,  and  boasted  of  rich  citizens  who  could  help  to  pay 
off  their  suzerain's  encumbrances  and  present  him  with 
an  offering  on  his  return.  The  impoverished  and  grate- 
ful noble  could  do  no  less,  in  gratitude  for  gift  and  con- 
tribution, than  secure  them  in  the  enjoyment  of  greater 
franchises  and  privileges  than  they  had  possessed  before. 
The  Church  also  gained  by  the  diminished  number  and 
power  of  the  lords,  who  had  seized  upon  tithe  and  offer- 
ing and  had  looked  with  disdain  and  hostility  on  the 
aggressions  of  the  lower  clergy.  True  to  its  origin,  the 
Church  still  continued  the  leader  of  the  people,  in  op- 
position to  the  pretensions  of  the  feudal  chiefs.  It  was 
still  a  democratic  organization  for  the  protection  of  the 
weak  against  the  powerful  j  and  though  we  have  seen 
that  the  bishops  and  other  dignitaries  frequently  as- 
sumed the  state  and  practised  the  cruelties  of  the  grasp- 
ing and  illiterate  baron,  public  opinion,  especially  in  the 
North  of  Europe,  was  not  revolted  against  these  in- 
stances of  priestly  domination,  for  whatever  was  gained 
by  the  crozier  was  lost  to  the  sword.  It  was  even  a 
consolation  to  the  injured  serf  to  see  the  truculent  land- 
lord who  had  oppressed  him  oppressed  in  his  turn  by  a 
still  more  truculent  bishop,  especially  when  that  bishop 
had  sprung  from  the  dregs  of  the  people,  and — crown 
and  consummation  of  all — when  the  Pope,  God's  vice- 
gerent upon  earth,  who  dethroned  emperors  and  made 
kings  hold  his  stirrup  as  he  mounted  his  mule,  was  de- 


274  TWELFTH   CENTURY. 

scended  from  no  more  distinguished  a  family  than  him* 
eelf.  It  was  the  effort  of  the  Church,  therefore,  in  all 
this  century,  to  lower  the  nobfe  and  to  elevate  the  poor. 
To  gain  popularity,  all  arts  were  resorted  to.  The 
clergy  were  the  showmen  and  play-actors  of  the  time. 
The  only  amusement  the  labourer  could  aim  at  was 
found  for  him,  in  rich  processions  and  gorgeous  cere- 
mony, by  the  priest.  How  could  any  fault  of  the  abbot 
or  prelate  turn  away  the  affection  of  the  peasant  from 
the  Church,  which  was  in  a  peculiar  manner  his  own 
establishment?  Never  had  the  drunkenness,  the  de- 
bauchery and  personal  indulgences  of  the  upper  eccle- 
siastics reached  such  a  pitch  before.  The  gluttony  of 
friars  and  monks  became  proverbial.  The  community 
of  certain  monasteries  complained  of  the  austerity  of 
their  abbots  in  reducing  their  ordinary  dinners  from 
sixteen  dishes  to  thirteen.  The  great  St.  Bernard  de- 
scribes many  of  the  rulers  of  the  Church  as  keeping  sixty 
horses  in  their  stables,  and  having  so  many  wines  upon 
their  board  that  it  was  impossible  to  taste  one-half  of  them. 
Yet  nothing  shook  the  attachment  of  the  uneducated 
commons.  Their  priest  got  up  dances  and  concerts  and 
miracles  for  their  edification,  and  had  a  right  to  enjoy  alJ 
the  luxuries  of  life.  Once  freed,  therefore,  from  the  watch- 
ful enmity  of  lord  and  king,  the  Church  was  well  aware 
that  its  power  would  be  irresistible.  The  people  were  de 
voted  to  it  as  their  earthly  defender  against  their  earthly 
oppressors,  the  caterer  of  all  their  amusements,  and  a» 
their  guide  in  the  path  to  heaven.  Gratitude  and  credu- 
lity, therefore,  were  equally  engaged  in  its  behalf.  An  J 
new  influences  came  to  its  support.  Eomance  and  won- 
der gathered  round  the  champions  of  the  Faith  fighting 
in  the  distant  regions  of  the  East.  Every  thing  became 
magnified  when  seen  through  the  medium  of  ignorancto 
6nd  fanaticfsm.     The  tales,  therefore,  strange  enough  in 


NEWS   FROM   PALESTINE.  276 

themselves,  which  were  related  by  pilgrims  returning 
from  the  Holy  Land,  and  amplified  a  hundredfold  by 
the  natural  exaggeratioi*  of  the  vulgar,  raised  higher 
than  ever  the  glory  of  the  Church.  The  fastings  and 
Bclf-inflicted  scourgings  of  holy  men,  it  was  believed, 
eflfbctod  more  than  the  courage  of  Godfrey  or  Bohe- 
mund ;  and  even  of  Godfrey  it  was  said  that  his  ascetic 
life  and  painful  penances  caused  more  losses  to  the 
enemy  than  his  matchless  strength  and  military  skill. 

It  would  be  delightful  if  we  could  place  ourselves  in 
the  position  of  the  breathless  crowds  at  that  time  listen- 
ing for  the  news  from  Palestine.  No  telegraphic  de- 
spatch from  the  Crimea  or  Hindostan  was  ever  waited 
for  with  such  impatience  or  received  with  such  emotion. 
The  baron  summoned  the  palmer  into  his  hall,  and 
heard  the  strange  history  of  the  march  to  Jerusalem, 
and  the  crowning  of  a  Christian  king,  and  the  creation 
of  a  feudal  court,  with  a  pang,  perhaps,  of  regret  that 
he  had  not  joined  the  pilgrimage,  which  might  have  made 
him  Duke  of  Bethlehem  or  monarch  of  Tiberias.  But 
the  peasants  in  their  workshops,  or  the  whole  village 
assembled  in  the  long  aisles  of  their  church,  lent  far 
more  attentive  ears  to  the  wayfaring  monk  who  had  es- 
caped from  the  prison  of  the  Saracen,  and  told  them  of 
the  marvels  accomplished  by  the  bones  of  martyrs  and 
apostles  which  had  been  revealed  to  holy  pilgrims  in 
their  dream  on  the  Mount  of  Olives.  Footprints  on  the 
heights  of  Calvary,  and  portions  of  the  manger  in 
Bethlehem,  were  described  in  awe-struck  voice;  and 
when  it  was  announced  that  in  the  belt  of  the  narrator, 
enwrapped  in  a  silken  scarf, — itself  a  fabric  of  incalcu- 
lable worth, — was  a  hair  of  an  apostle's  head,  (which 
their  lord  had  purchased  for  a  large  sum,)  to  be  de- 
posited upon  their  altar,  they  must  have  thought  the 
Bacrifices  and  losses  of  the  Crusade  amply  repaid.     And 


^76  TWELFTH  CENTURY. 

no  amount  of  these  sacred  articles  seemed  in  the  leasi 
to  diminish  their  importance.  The  demand  was  always 
greatly  in  advance  of  the  supply,  however  vast  it 
might  be.  And  as  the  mines  of  California  and  Aus- 
tralia have  hitherto  deceived  the  prophets  of  evil,  by 
having  no  perceptible  effect  on  the  price  of  the  precious 
metals,  the  incalculable  importation  of  saints'  teeth,  and 
holy  personages'  clothes,  and  fragments  of  the  true 
Cross,  and  prickles  of  the  real  Crown  of  Thorns,  had  no 
depressing  effect  on  the  market-value  of  similar  com- 
modities with  which  all  Christian  Europe  was  inundated. 
Faith  seemed  to  expand  in  proportion  as  relics  became 
plentiful,  as  credit  expands  on  the  security  of  a  supply 
of  gold.  And  as  many  of  those  articles  were  actually 
of  as  clearly-recognised  a  pecuniary  value  as  houses  or 
lands,  and  represented  in  any  market  or  hanking-house 
a  definite  and  very  considerable  sum,  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  the  capital  of  the  "West  was  greatly  in- 
creased by  these  acquisitions  from  the  East.  The  cup 
of  onyx,  carved  in  one  stone,  which  was  believed  to 
nave  been  that  in  which  the  wine  of  the  Last  Supper 
was  held  when  our  Saviour  instituted  the  Communion, 
was  pledged  by  its  owner  for  an  enormous  sum,  and — 
what  is  perhaps  more  strange — was  redeemed  when  the 
term  of  the  loan  expired  by  the  repayment  of  principal 
and  interest.  The  intercourse,  therefore,  between  power 
and  money  showed  that  each  was  indispensable  to  the 
other.  The  baron  relaxed  his  severity,  and  the  citizen 
opened  his  purse-strings;  the  Church  inculcated  the 
equality  of  all  men  in  presence  of  the  altar;  and  when  the 
kings  perceived  what  merchandise  might  be  made  of  pri- 
vileges and  exemj)tions  accorded  to  their  subjects,  and  how 
at  one  great  blow  the  townsman's  squeezable  riches  would 
be  increased  and  the  baron's  local  influence  diminished, 
there  was  a  struggle  between  all  the  crowned  heads  as  ta 


RISE   OF   CITIES.  277 

which  should  be  most  favourable  to  the  commons.  It  was 
in  this  century,  owing  to  the  Crusades,  which  made  the 
commonalty  indispensable  and  the  nobility  weak,  which 
strengthened  the  Crown  and  the  Church  and  made  it 
their  joint  interest  to  restrain  the  exactions  of  the  feudal 
proprietors,  that  the  liberties  of  Europe  took  their  rise 
in  the  establishment  of  the  third  estate.  In  the  county 
of  Flanders,  the  great  towns  had  already  made  them- 
selves so  wealthy  and  independent  that  it  scarcely 
needed  a  legal  ratification  of  their  franchise  to  make 
them  free  cities.  But  in  Italy  a  step  further  had  been 
made,  and  the  great  word  Eepublic,  which  had  been 
silent  for  so  many  years,  had  again  been  heard,  and  had 
taken  possession  of  the  general  mind.  In  spite  of  the 
opposition  and  the  military  successes  of  Eoger,  the  Nor- 
man king  of  Sicily,  the  spirit  which  animated  those 
great  trading  communities  was  never  subdued.  In 
Venice  itself — ^the  greatest  and  most  illustrious  of  those 
republics,  the  first  founded  and  last  overthrown — the 
original  municipal  form  of  government  had  never  been 
aboUshed.  At  all  times  its  liberties  had  been  preserved 
and  its  laws  administered  by  officers  of  its  own  choice, 
and  from  it  proceeded  at  this  time  a  feeling  of  social 
equality  and  an  example  of  commercial  prosperity 
which  had  a  strong  effect  on  the  nascent  freedom  of  the 
lower  and  industrious  classes  over  all  the  world.  Genoa 
was  not  inferior  either  in  liberty  or  enterprise  to  any  of 
its  rivals.  Its  fleets  traversed  the  Mediterranean,  and, 
Deing  equally  ready  to  fight  or  to  trade,  brought  wealth 
and  glory  home  from  the  coasts  of  Greece  and  Asia.  It 
is  to  be  observed  that  the  first  reappearance  of  self- 
government  was  presented  in  the  towns  upon  the  coast, 
whose  situation  enabled  them  to  compensate  for  small- 
ness  of  territory  by  the  command  of  the  sea.  The 
BhorcB  of  Italy  and  the  south  of  France,  and  the  in 


-'0  TWELFTH   CENTURY. 

dented  sea-line  of  Flanders,  followed  in  this  respect  the 
example  set  in  former  ages  by  Greece,  and  Tyre,  and 
Pentapolis,  and  Carthage.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  sight  of  these  powerful  communities,  governed  by 
their  consuls  and  legislated  for  by  their  parliamentary 
assemblies,  must  have  put  new  thoughts  into  the  heads 
of  the  serfs  and  labourers  returning,  in  vessels  furnished 
by  citizens  like  themselves,  from  the  conquest  of  Cyprus 
and  Jerusalem,  where  the  whole  harvest  of  wealth  and 
glory  had  been  reaped  by  their  lords.  Encouraged  by 
these  examples,  and  by  the  protection  of  the  King  of 
France  and  Emperor  of  Germany,  the  towns  in  Central 
and  Western  Europe  exerted  themselves  to  emulate  the 
republican  cities  of  the  South.  The  nearest  approach 
they  could  hope  to  the  independence  they  had  seen  in 
Pisa  or  Yenice  was  the  possession  of  the  right  of  elect- 
ing their  own  magistrates  and  making  their  own  laws. 
These  privileges,  we  have  seen,  were  insured  to  them  by 
the  helplessness  and  impoverishment  of  the  feudal  aris- 
tocracy and  the  countenance  of  the  Church. 

But  the  Church  towards  the  middle  of  this  century 
found  that  the  countenance  she  had  given  to  liberty  in 
other  places  was  used  as  an  argument  against  herself  in 
the  central  seat  of  her  power.  Eome,  the  city  of  con- 
mis  and  tribunes,  was  carried  away  by  the  great  idea ; 
ind  under  the  guidance  of  Arnold  of  Brescia,  a  monk 
who  believed  himself  a  Brutus,  the  standard  was  again 
hoisted  on  the  Capitol,  displaying  the  magic  letters  S. 
P.  Q.  E.,  (Senatus  Populus  que  Bomanus.)  The  Pope 
was  expelled  by  the  population,  the  freedom  of  the  city 
proclaimed,  the  separation  of  the  spiritual  and  temporal 
powers  pronounced  by  the  unanimous  voice,  the  govern- 
ment of  priests  abolished,  and  measures  taken  to  main- 
tain the  authority  the  citizens  had  assumed.  The 
banished  Pope  had  died  while  these  things  were  going 


WEALTH    OF    TRADESMEN. 


279 


on,  and  his  successor  was  hunted  down  the  steps  of  the 
Capitol,  and  the  revolution  was  accomplished.  "  Through 
out  the  peninsula,"  says  a  German  historian,  "  except  in 
the  kingdom  of  Naples,  from  Rome  to  the  smallest  city, 
the  repubhcan  form  prevailed."  Every  thing  had  con- 
cuiTcd  to  this  result, — the  force  of  arms,  the  rise  of  com- 
merce, and  the  glorious  remembrance  of  the  past.  St. 
Bernard  himself  acquiesced  in  the  position  now  occupied 
by  the  Pope,  and  he  wrote  to  his  scholar  Eugenius  the 
Third,  to  "  leave  the  Eomans  alone,  and  to  exchange  the 
city  against  the  world,"  ("  ui'bem  pro  orbo  mutatam.") 
But  the  effervescence  of  the  popular  will  was  soon  at  an 
end.  The  fear  of  republicanism  made  common  cause 
between  the  Pope  and  Emperor.  Frederick  Barbarossa 
revenged  the  indignities  cast  on  the  chair  of  St.  Peter 
by  burning  the  rebellious  Arnold  and  re-establishing  the 
ancient  form  of  government  by  force.  Yet  the  spirit 
of  equality  which  was  thus  repressed  by  violence  fer- 
mented in  secret ;  nor  was  equality  all  that  was  aimed 
at  amid  some  of  the  swarming  seats  of  population  and 
commerce.  We  find  indeed,  from  this  time,  that  in  a 
great  number  of  instances  the  original  relations  between 
the  town  and  baron  were  reversed :  the  noble  put  him- 
self under  the  protection  of  the  municipality,  and  re- 
ceived its  guarantee  against  the  assaults  or  injuries  of 
the  prouder  and  less  politic  members  of  his  class.  It  was 
a  strange  thing  to  see  a  feudal  lord  receive  his  orders 
from  the  municipal  ofiicers  of  a  country  town,  and  still 
stranger  to  perceive  the  low  opinion  which  the  courage- 
ous and  high-fed  burghers  entertained  of  the  pomp  and 
circumstance  of  the  mailed  knights  of  whom  they  had 
been  accustomed  to  stand  in  awe.  Their  ramparts  were 
strong,  their  granaries  well  filled,  their  companions 
stoutly  armed;  and  they  used  to  lean  over  the  wall, 
when  a  hostile  champion  summoned  them  to  submit  to 


^80  TWELFTH   CENTURY. 

the  exactions  of  a  great  proprietor,  and  watch  th* 
clumsy  charger  staggering  under  his  heavy  armour^ 
with  shouts  of  derision.  Men  who  had  thus  thrown  off 
their  hereditary  veneration  for  the  lords  of  the  soil,  and 
contentedly  saw  the  deposition  of  the  Eoman  Pope  by 
a  Eoman  Senate  and  People,  were  not  likely  to  pay  9 
blind  submission  to  the  spiritual  dictation  of  theii 
priests.  In  the  towns,  accordingly,  a  spirit  of  free  in- 
quiry into  the  mysteries  of  the  faith  began ;  and,  while 
country  districts  still  heard  with  awe  the  impossible 
wonders  of  the  monkish  legends,  there  were  rash  and 
daring  scholars  in  several  countries,  who  threw  doubt 
upon  the  plainest  statements  of  Revelation.  Of  these 
the  best-known  is  the  still  famous  Abelard,  whose  exer- 
tions as  a  religious  inquirer  have  been  thrown  into  the 
shade  by  his  more  interesting  character  of  the  hero  of 
a  love-story.  The  letters  of  Eloisa,  and  the  unfortunate 
issue  of  their  affection,  have  kept  their  names  from  the 
oblivion  which  has  fallen  upon  their  metaphysical 
triumphs.  And  yet  during  their  lives  the  glory  of  Abe- 
lard did  not  depend  on  the  passionate  eloquence  of  his 
pupil,  but  arose  from  the  unequalled  sharpness  of  his 
intellect  and  his  skill  in  argumentation.  Of  noble 
family,  the  handsomest  man  of  his  time,  wonderfully 
gifted  with  talent  and  accomplishment,  he  was  the  first 
instance  of  a  man  professing  the  science  of  theology 
without  being  a  priest.  Wherever  he  went,  thousands 
of  enthusiastic  scholars  surrounded  his  chair.  His 
eloquence  was  so  fascinating  that  the  listener  found 
himself  irresistibly  carried  away  by  the  stream ;  and  if 
an  opponent  was  hardy  enough  to  stand  up  against  him, 
the  acuteness  of  his  logic  was  as  infallible  as  the  torrent 
of  his  oratory  had  been,  and  in  every  combat  he  carried 
ftway  the  prize.  He  doubted  about  original  sin,  and 
by  implication  about  the  atonement,  and  many  other 


REASONING. 


281 


Articles  of  the  Christian  belief.  The  power  and  consti- 
tution of  the  Church  were  endangered  by  the  same 
weapons  which  assailed  the  groundworks  of  the  faith; 
and  yet  in  all  Europe  no  sufficient  champion  for  truth 
and  orthodoxy  could  be  found.  Abelard  was  triumphant 
over  all  his  gainsayers,  till  at  length  Bernard  of  Clair- 
vaux,  who  even  in  his  lifetime  was  looked  on  with  the 
veneration  due  to  a  saint,  who  refused  an  archbishopric, 
and  the  popedom  itself,  took  up  the  gauntlet  thrown 
down  by  the  lover  of  Eloisa,  and  reduced  him  to  silence 
by  the  superiority  of  his  reasonings  and  the  threats  of 
a  general  council.  It  is  sufficient  to  remark  the  appear- 
ance of  Abelard  in  this  century,  as  the  commencement 
of  a  reaction  against  the  dogmatic  authority  of  the 
Church.  It  was  henceforth  possible  to  reason  and  to 
inquire ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Protestantism 
even  in  this  modified  and  isolated  form  had  a  beneficial 
effect  on  the  establishment  it  assailed.  A  new  armory 
was  required  to  meet  the  assaults  of  dialectic  and  scholar- 
ship. Dialecticians  and  scholars  were  therefore,  hence- 
forth, as  much  valued  in  the  Church  as  self-flagellating 
friars  and  miracle-performing  saints.  The  faith  was 
now  guarded  by  a  noble  array  of  highly-polished  intel- 
lects, and  the  very  dogma  of  the  total  abnegation  of  the 
understanding  at  the  bidding  of  the  priest  was  supported 
by  a  show  of  reasoning  which  few  other  questions 
had  called  forth.  With  the  enlargement  of  the  clerical 
sphere  of  knowledge,  refinement  in  taste  and  sentiment 
took  place.  And  at  this  time,  as  philosophic  discussion 
took  its  rise  with  Abelard,  the  ennobling  and  idealiza- 
tion of  woman  took  its  birth  contemporaneously  with 
the  sufferings  of  Eloisa.  Up  to  this  period  the  Church 
had  avowedly  looked  with  disdain  on  woman,  as  inherit* 
iDg  in  a  peculiar  dcgi*ee  the  curse  of  our  first  parents, 
because    she    had   been    the    first  to   break   the  law 


282  TWELFTH   CENTURY. 

Knightly  gallantry,  indeed,  had  thought  proper  to  ele- 
vate the  feminine  ideal  and  clothe  with  imaginary  vir- 
tues the  heroines  of  its  fictitious  idolatry.  It  made  her 
the  aim  and  arbiter  of  all  its  achievements.  The  prin- 
cipal seat  in  hall  and  festival  was  reserved  for  the  softer 
sex,  which  hitherto  had  been  considered  scarcely  worthy 
of  reverence  or  companionship.  Perhaps  this  courtesy 
to  the  ladies  on  the  part  of  knights  and  nobles  began  in 
an  opposition  to  the  wife-secluding  habits  of  the  Orien- 
tals against  whom  they  fought,  as  at  an  earlier  date  the 
worship  of  images  was  certainly  maintained  by  Eome 
as  a  protest  against  the  unadorned  worship  of  the  Sara- 
cens. Perhaps  it  arose  from  the  gradual  expansion  of 
wealth  and  the  security  of  life  and  property,  which  left 
time  and  opportunity  for  the  cultivation  of  the  female 
character.  Ladies  were  constituted  chiefs  of  societies 
of  nuns,  and  were  obeyed  with  implicit  submission. 
Large  communities  of  young  maidens  were  presided 
over  by  widows  who  were  still  in  the  bloom  of  youth ; 
and  so  holy  and  pure  were  these  sisterhoods  considered, 
that  brotherhoods  and  monks  were  allowed  to  occupy 
the  same  house,  and  the  sexes  were  only  separated  from 
each  other,  even  at  night,  by  an  aged  abbot  sleeping  on 
the  floor  between  them.  Though  this  experiment  failed, 
the  fact  of  its  being  tried  proved  the  confidence  in- 
spired by  the  spotlessness  of  the  female  character. 
Other  things  conspired  to  give  a  greater  dignity  to  what 
had  been  called  the  inferior  sex.  The  death  of  whole 
families  in  the  Crusade  had  left  the  daughters  heiresses 
of  immense  possessions.  In  every  country  but  France 
the  Crown  itself  was  open  to  female  succession,  and  it 
was  henceforth  impossible  to  aifect  a  superiority  over  a 
person  merely  because  she  was  corporeally  weak  and 
beautiful,  who  was  lady  of  strong  castles  and  could  sum- 
mon a  thousand  retainers  beneath  the  banners  of  hei 


GREAT  FEATURES  OP  THE  CENTURY.      ^83 

house.  The  very  elevation  of  the  women  with  whom 
they  were  surrounded — the  peeresses,  and  princesses, 
and  even  the  ladies  of  lower  rank,  to  whom  the  voice 
of  the  troubadours  attributed  all  the  virtues  under 
heaven — necessitated  in  the  mind  of  the  clergy  a  cor- 
responding elevation  in  the  character  of  the  queen  and 
representative  of  the  female  sex,  whom  they  had  already 
worshipped  as  personally  without  sin  and  endowed  with 
superhuman  power.  At  this  time  the  immaculate  con- 
ception of  the  Holy  Yirgin  was  first  broached  as  an 
article  of  belief, — a  doctrine  which,  after  being  dormant 
at  intervals  and  occasionally  blossoming  into  declara- 
tion, has  finally  received  its  full  ratification  by  the 
authority  of  the  present  Pope, — Pius  the  Ninth.  In  the 
twelfth  century  it  was  acknowledged  and  propagated  as 
a  fresh  increase  to  the  glory  of  the  mother  of  God ;  but 
it  is  now  fixed  forever  as  indispensable  to  the  salvation 
of  every  Christian. 

Such,  then,  are  the  great  features  by  which  to  mark 
this  century, — ^the  combination  of  rank  with  rank  caused 
by  the  mutual  danger  of  lord  and  serf  in  the  Crusade, 
the  rise  of  freedom  by  the  commercial  activity  imparted 
by  the  same  cause  to  the  towns,  the  elevation  of  the 
idea  of  woman,  without  which  no  true  civilization  can 
take  place.  These  are  the  leading  and  general  charac- 
teristics :  add  to  them  what  we  have  slightly  alluded  to, 
— ^the  first  specimens  of  the  joyous  lays  and  love-sonnets 
of  the  young  knights  returning  from  Palestine  and 
pouring  forth  their  admiration  of  birth  and  beauty  in 
the  soft  language  of  Italy  or  Languedoc, — the  inter- 
course between  distant  nations,  which  was  indispensable 
in  the  combined  expeditions  against  the  common  foe,  so 
that  the  rough  German  cavalier  gathered  lessons  in 
manner  or  accomplishment  from  the  more  polished 
princes  of  Anjou  or  Aquitaine, — and  it  will  be  seen  that 


284 


TWELFTH   CENTURY, 


this  was  the  century  of  awakening  mind  and  softening 
influences.  There  were  scholars  like  Abelard,  intro- 
ducing the  hitherto  unknown  treasures  of  the  Greek 
and  Hebrew  tongues,  and  yet  presenting  the  finest 
specimens  of  gay  and  accomplished  gentlemen,  un- 
matched in  sweetness  of  voice  and  mastery  of  the  harp; 
and  there  were  at  the  other  side  of  the  picture  saints 
like  Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  not  relying  any  longer  on 
visions  and  the  traditionary  marvels  of  the  past,  but 
displaying  the  power  of  an  acute  diplomatist  and  wide- 
minded  politician  in  the  midst  of  the  most  extraordinary 
self-denial  and  the  exercises  of  a  rigorous  asceticism, 
which  in  former  ages  had  been  limited  to  the  fanatical 
and  insane.  To  this  man's  influence  was  owing  the 
„,^   Second  Crusade,  which  occurred  in  1147.    Dif- 

A.D.  1147. 

ferent  from  the  first,  which  had  been  the  result 
of  popular  enthusiasm  and  dependent  for  its  success  on 
undisciplined  numbers  and  religious  fury,  this  was  a 
great  European  and  Christian  movement,  concerted 
between  the  sovereigns  and  ratified  by  the  peoples. 
Kings  took  the  command,  and  whole  nations  bestowed 
their  wealth  and  influence  on  the  holy  cause.  Louis  the 
Seventh  of  France  led  all  the  paladins  of  his  land ;  and 
Conrad,  the  German  Emperor,  collected  all  the  forces  of 
the  West  to  give  the  finishing-blow  to  the  power  of  the 
Mohammedans  and  restore  the  struggling  kingdom 
of  Jerusalem.  Seventy  thousand  horsemen  and  two 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  foot-soldiers  were  the 
smallest  part  of  the  array.  Whole  districts  were  de« 
populated  by  the  multitudes  of  artificers,  shopmen, 
women,  children,  bufibons,  mimics,  priests,  and  conjurers 
who  accompanied  the  march.  It  looked  like  one  of  the 
great  movements  which  convulsed  the  Koman  Empire 
when  Goths  or  Burgundians  poured  into  the  land.  But 
the  results  were  nearly  the  same  as  in  the  days  of  God 


THIRD   CRUSADE. 


285 


frey  und  Bohemund.  Yalour  and  discipline,  national 
emulation  and  knightly  skill,  were  of  no  avail  against 
climate  and  disease.  Again  the  West  astonished  the 
Turks  with  the  impetuosity  of  its  courage  and  the  dis- 
play of  its  hosts,  but  lay  weakened  and  exhausted  when 
the  convulsive  effort  was  past.  A  million  perished  in 
the  useless  struggle.  Forty  years  scarcely  sufficed  to 
restore  the  nobility  to  sufficient  power  to  undertake 
another  suicidal  attempt.  But  in  1191  the 
Third  Crusade  departed  under  the  conduct  of 
Eichard  of  England,  and  earned  the  same  glory  and  un- 
success.  The  century  was  weakened  by  those  wretchec 
but  not  fruitless  expeditions,  which,  in  round  numbers, 
cost  two  millions  of  lives,  and  produced  such  memorable 
effects  on  the  general  state  of  Europe ;  yet  it  will  be 
better  remembered  by  us  if  we  direct  our  attention  to 
some  of  the  incidents  which  have  a  more  direct  bearing 
on  our  own  country.  Of  these  the  most  remarkable  is 
the  commencement  of  the  long-continued  enmity  be- 
tween France  and  England,  of  the  wars  which  lasted  so 
many  years,  which  made  our  most  eminent  politicians 
at  one  time  believe  that  the  countries  were  natural 
enemies,  incapable  of  permanent  union  or  even  of  mutual 
respect ;  and  these  took  their  rise,  as  most  great  wars 
have  done,  from  the  paltriest  causes,  and  were  continued 
on  the  most  unfounded  pretences. 

Henry  the  First  was  the  son  of  William  the  Con- 
queror. On  the  death  of  his  brother  William  Eufus  he 
seized  the  English  crown,  though  the  eldest  of  the  family, 
Robert,  was  still  alive.  Eobert  was  fond  of  fighting 
without  the  responsibility  of  command,  and  delighted 
to  be  religious  without  the  troubles  of  a  religious  life. 
He  therefore  joined  the  First  Crusade  to  gratify  this 
double  desire,  and  mortgaged  his  dukedom  of  Nor- 
mandy to  Henry  to  supply  him  with  horses  and  arms 


*oo  TWELFTH   CENTURY. 

and  enable  him  to  support  his  dignity  as  a  Christian 
prince  at  Jerusalem.  His  dukedom  he  never  could  re- 
cover, for  his  extravagances  prevented  him  from  repay- 
ment of  the  loan.  He  tried  to  reconquer  it  by  force, 
but  was  defeated  at  the  battle  of  Tinchebray,  and  was 
guarded  by  the  zealous  affection  of  his  brother  all  the 
rest  of  his  life  in  the  Tower  of  London.  He  left  a  son, 
who  was  used  as  an  instrument  of  assault  against  Henry 
by  the  Suzerain  of  Normandy,  Louis  the  Sixth,  King  of 
France.  Orders  were  issued  to  the  usurping  feudatory 
to  resign  his  possessions  into  the  hands  of  the  rightful 
heir;  but,  however  obedient  the  Duke  of  Normandy 
might  profess  to  be  to  his  liege  lord  the  King  of  France, 
the  King  of  England  held  a  very  different  language, 

and  took  a  different  estimate  of  his  position. 

And  in  the  time  of  the  second  Henry  a  change 
took  place  in  their  respective  situations  which  seemed 
to  justify  the  assumptions  of  the  English  king.  That 
grandson  of  Henry  the  First  had  opposed  his  liege  lord 
of  France  by  arms  and  arts,  and  at  last  by  one  great 
master-stroke  turned  his  own  arms  upon  his  rival  and 
strengthened  himself  on  his  spoils.  In  the  Second 
Crusade  the  scrupulous  delicacy  of  Louis  the  Seventh 
of  France  had  been  revolted  by  the  indiscreet  or  guilty 
conduct  of  Eleanor  his  wife.  He  repudiated  her  as  un- 
worthy of  his  throne;  and  Henry,  who  had  no  delicacies 
of  conscience  when  they  interfered  with  his  interest, 
offered  the  rejected  Eleanor  his  hand;  for  she  continued 
the  undoubted  mistress  of  Poitou  and  Guienne.  No 
stain  derived  from  her  principles  or  conduct  was  re- 
flected in  the  eyes  of  the  ambitious  Henry  on  those 
noble  provinces,  and  from  henceforth  his  Continental 
possessions  far  exceeded  those  of  his  suzerain.  The 
other  feudatories,  encouraged  by  this  example,  owned  a 
very  modified  submission  to  their  nominal  head;  and 


THE   PLANTAGENETS.  287 

the  inheritors  of  the  throne  of  the  Capets  were  again 
reduced  to  the  comparative  weakness  of  their  predeces- 
Bors  of  the  Carlovingian  line.  Yet  there  was  one 
element  of  vitality  of  which  the  feudal  barons  had  not 
deprived  the  king.  A  fief,  when  it  lapsed  for  want  of 
heirs,  was  reattached  to  the  Crown ;  and  in  the  turmoil 
and  adventure  of  those  unsettled  times  the  extinction 
of  a  line  of  warriors  and  pilgrims  was  not  an  uncommon 
event.  Even  while  a  family  was  numerous  and  healthy 
the  uncertain  nature  of  their  possession  deprived  it  of 
half  its  value,  for  at  the  end  of  that  gallant  line  of 
knights  and  cavaliers,  slain  as  they  might  be  in  battle, 
carried  off  by  the  pestilences  which  were  usual  at  that 
period,  or  wasted  away  in  journeys  to  the  Holy  Land 
and  sieges  in  the  heats  of  Palestine,  stood  the  feudal 
king,  ready  to  enter  into  undisputed  possession  of  the 
dukedoms  or  counties  which  it  had  cost  them  so  much 
time  and  danger  to  make  independent  and  strong.  In 
the  case  of  Normandy  or  Guienne  themselves,  Louis 
might  have  looked  without  much  uneasiness  on  the 
building  of  castles  and  draining  of  marshes,  when  he 
reflected  that  but  a  life  or  two  lay  between  him  and  the 
enriched  and  strengthened  fief;  and  when  those  lives 
were  such  desperadoes  as  Eichard  and  such  cowards  as 
John,  the  prospect  did  not  seem  hopeless  of  an  imme- 
diate succession.  But  the  French  kings  were  still  more 
fortunate  in  being  opposed  to  such  unamiable  rivals  as  the 
coarse  and  worldly  descendants  of  the  Conqueror.  The 
personal  characters  of  those  men,  however  their  energy 
and  courage  might  benefit  them  in  actual  war,  made 
them  feared  and  hated  wherever  they  were  known. 
They  were  sensual,  cruel,  and  unprincipled  to  a  degree 
unusual  even  in  those  ages  of  rude  manners  and  unde- 
veloped conscience.  Their  personal  appearance  itself 
was  ar    index  of   the  ungovernable  passions   within 


^^  TWELFTH   CENTURY. 

Fat,  broad-shouldered,  low-statured,  red-haired,  louu 
voiced,  they  were  frightful  to  look  upon  even  in  their 
calmest  moods;  but  when  the  Conqueror  stormed,  no 
feeling  of  ruth  or  reverence  stood  in  his  way.  When 
he  was  refused  the  daughter  of  the  Count  of  Boulogne, 
he  forced  his  way  into  the  chamber  of  the  countess^ 
seized  her  by  the  hair  of  her  head,  dragged  her  round 
the  room,  and  stamped  on  her  with  his  feet.  Eobert 
his  son  was  of  the  same  uninviting  exterior.  "William 
Eufus  was  little  and  very  stout.  Henry  the  Second  was 
gluttonous  and  debauched.  Kichard  the  Lion-Heart 
was  cruel  as  the  animal  that  gave  him  name ;  and  John 
was  the  most  debased  and  contemptible  of  mankind.  A 
race  of  gentle  and  truthful  men,  on  the  other  hand, 
ennobled  the  crown  of  France.  The  kings,  from  Louis 
the  Debonnaire  to  Louis  the  Seventh,  or  Young,  were 
favourites  of  the  Church  and  champions  of  the  people. 
The  harsh  and  violent  nobility  despised  them,  but  they 
were  venerated'  in  the  huts  where  poor  men  lie.  The 
very  scruple  which  induced  Louis  to  divorce  his  wife, 
whose  conduct  had  stained  the  purity  of  the  Crusade, 
almost  repaid  the  loss  of  her  great  estates  by  the  in- 
creased love  and  respect  of  his  subjects.  And  when  the 
line  of  pure  and  honourable  rulers  was  for  a  while  in- 
terrupted by  the  appearance,  upon  a  throne  so 
long  established  in  equity,  of  an  armed  warrioi 
in  the  person  of  Philip  Augustus,  it  was  felt  that  the 
sword  was  at  last  in  the  hands  of  an  avenger,  who  was 
to  execute  the  decrees  of  Heaven  upon  the  enemiea, 
whom  the  moderation,  justice,  and  mercy  of  his  prede- 
cessors had  failed  to  move. 

But  before  we  come  to  the  personal  relations  of  the 
French  and  English  kings  we  must  take  a  rapid  view 
of  one  of  the  great  incidents  by  which  this  century  is 
marked; — an  incident  which  for  a  long  time  attracted 


A-BECKETT.  289 

Ihe  notice  of  all  Europe,  and  was  productive  of  very  im- 
portant consequences  within  our  own  country.  Hitherto 
England  had  played  the  part  of  a  satellite  to  the  Court 
of  Eome.  Previous  to  the  quarrels  with  France,  indeed, 
one  great  tie  between  her  and  the  Continental  nations 
was  the  community  of  their  submission  to  the  Pope. 
Foreigners  have  at  all  times  found  wealth  and  kind 
treatment  here.  Germans,  Italians,  Frenchmen,  any 
one  who  could  make  interest  with  the  patrons  of  largo 
livings,  held  rank  and  honours  in  the  English  Church. 
Little  enough,  it  was  felt,  was  all  that  could  be  done  in 
A.D.  1154  behalf  of  foreign  ecclesiastics  to  repay  them  for 
-1159.  ii^Q  condescension  they  showed  in  elevating 
Nicholas  Breakspear,  an  Anglo-Saxon  of  St.  Alban's,  to 
the  papal  chair.  But  Nicholas,  in  taking  another  name, 
lost  his  English  heart.  As  Adrian  the  Fourth,  he  pre- 
ferred Eome  to  England,  and  maintained  his  authority 
with  as  high  a  hand  as  any  of  his  predecessor.  Knights 
and  nobles,  and  even  the  higher  orders  of  the  clergy, 
were  at  length  discontented  with  the  continual  exactions 
of  the  Holy  See;  and  in  1162  the  same  battle  which  had 
agitated  the  world  between  Henry  the  Fourth  of  Ger- 
many and  Gregory  the  Seventh  was  fought  out  in  a  still 
bitterer  spirit  be^>ween  Henry  the  Second  of  England 
and  Thomas  a-Beckett.  All  the  story-books  of  English 
history  have  told  us  the  romantic  incidents  of  the  birth 
of  the  ambitious  priest.  It  is  possible  the  obscurity  of 
his  origin  was  concealed  by  his  contemporaries  under 
the  interesting  legend,  which  must  have  been  a  very 
early  subject  for  the  fancy  of  the  poet  and  troubadour, 
of  a  love  between  a  Eed-Cross  pilgrim  and  a  Saracen 
emir's  daughter.  It  shows  a  remarkable  softening  of 
the  ancient  hatred  to  the  infidels,  that  the  votaress  of 
Mohammed  should  have  been  chosen  as  the  mother  of  a 
naint  But  whatever  doubt  there  may  arise  about  the 
13  ^ 


290  TWELFTH   CENTURY. 

reality  of  the  deserted  maiden's  journey  in  search  of  her 
admirer,  and  her  discovery  of  his  abode  by  the  mere 
reiteration  of  his  name,  which  is  beautifully  said  to  bo 
the  only  word  of  English  she  remembered,  there  is  no 
doubt  of  the  early  favour  which  the  young  Anglo-Sara- 
cen attained  with  the  king,  or  of  the  desire  the  sagacious 
Henry  entertained  to  avail  himself  of  the  great  talents 
which  made  his  favourite  delightful  as  a  companion  and 
indispensable  as  a  chancellor,  in  the  higher  position  still 
of  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  Comptroller  of  the 
English  Church.  For  high  pretensions  were  put  forward 
by  the  clergy :  they  insisted  upon  the  introduction  of  the 
canon  laws;  they  claimed  exemption  from  trial  by  civil 
process ;  they  were  to  be  placed  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
ordinary  tribunals,  and  were  to  be  under  their  own 
separate  rulers,  and  directly  subject  in  life  and  property 
to  the  decrees  of  Eome. 

Henry  knew  but  one  man  in  his  dominions  able  to 
contend  in  talent  and  acuteness  with  the  advocates  of 
the  Church,  and  that  was  his  chancellor  and  friend,  the 
gay  and  generous  and  affectionate  a-Beckett.  So  one 
day,  without  giving  him  much  time  for  preparation,  he 
persuaded  him  to  be  made  a  priest,  and  at  the  same 
moment  named  him  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and 
Primate  of  all  England.  N'ow,  he  thought,  we  have  a 
champion  who  will  do  battle  in  our  cause  and  stand  up 
for  the  liberties  of  his  native  land.  But  a-Beckett  had 
dressed  himself  in  a  hair  shirt  and  flogged  himself  with 
an  iron  scourge.  He  had  invited  the  holiest  of  the 
priests  to  favour  him  with  their  advice,  and  had  thrown 
himself  on  his  knees  on  the  approach  of  the  most  ascetic 
of  the  monks  and  friars.  All  his  fine  establishments 
were  broken  up;  his  horses  were  sent  away;  his  silver 
table-services  sold  ;  and  the  new  archbishop  fasted  on 
bread  and  water  and  lay  on  the  hard  floor.    Henry  was 


FAILURE    OF   THE    KIN  J.  29) 

astonished  and  uneasy;  and  ho  had  soon  very  good 
cause  for  his  uneasiness,  for  his  favourite  orator,  hia 
boon-companion,  his  gallant  chancellor,  from  whom  he 
had  expected  support  and  victory,  turned  against  him 
with  the  most  ruthless  animosity,  and  pushed  the  pre- 
tensions of  Eome  to  a  pitch  they  had  never  reached 
before.  Nobody,  however  he  may  blame  the  doublo- 
dealing  or  the  ambition  of  a-Beckett,  can  deny  him  the 
praise  of  personal  courage  in  making  opposition  to  the 
king.  The  Norman  blood  was  as  hot  in  him  as  in  any 
of  his  predecessors.  When  he  got  into  a  passion,  we 
are  told  by  a  contemporary  chronicler,  his  blue  eyes 
became  filled  with  blood.  In  a  fit  of  rage  he  bit  a  page's 
shoulder.  A  favourite  servant  having  contradicted  him, 
he  rushed  after  the  man  on  the  stair,  and,  not  being 
able  to  catch  him,  gnawed  the  straw  upon  the  boards. 
We  may  therefore  guess  with  what  feelings  the  injured 
Plantagenet  received  the  behaviour  of  his  newly-created 
primate.  He  stormed  and  raged,  terrified  the  other 
prelates  to  join  him  in  his  measures  for  curbing  the 
power  of  the  Church,  chafed  himself  for  several  years 
against  the  unconquerable  firmness  of  the  arrogant  arch- 
bishop, and  finally  failed  in  every  object  he  had  aimed 
at.  The  violence  of  the  king  was  met  with  the  aflected 
resignation  of  the  sufferer;  and  at  last,  when  the  im- 
patience of  Henry  gave  encouragement  to  his  followers 
to  put  the  refractory  priest  to  death,  the  quarrel  was 
lifted  out  of  the  ordinary  category  of  a  dispute  between 
the  crown  and  the  crozier :  it  became  a  combat  between 
a  wilful  and  irreligious  tyrant  and  a  mart}  red  saint.  It 
requires  us  to  enter  into  the  feelings  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury to  be  able  to  understand  the  issue  of  this  great  con- 
flict. In  our  own  day  the  assumptions  of  a-Beckett,  and 
his  claims  of  exemption  from  the  ordinary  laws,  have 
no  sympathizers   among    the    lovers    of,  progress    or 


292  TWELFTH   CENTURY. 

freedom.  But  in  the  time  of  the  second  Henry  the  only 
chance  of  either,  in  England,  was  found  under  the 
shelter  of  the  Church.  That  great  establishment  was 
still  the  only  protection  against  the  lawless  violence  of 
the  king  and  nobles.  The  Norman  possessors  of  the 
land  wore  still  an  army  encamped  on  hostile  soil  and 
levying  contributions  by  the  law  of  the  strong  hand. 
Disunion  had  not  yet  arisen  between  the  sovereign  and 
his  lords,  except  as  to  the  division  of  the  spoil.  The 
Crusades  had  not  depopulated  England  to  the  same  ex- 
tent as  some  of  the  other  countries  in  Europe ;  and  the 
wars  of  the  troubled  days  of  Stephen  and  Matilda, 
though  fatal  to  the  prosperity  of  the  land,  and  destruc- 
tive of  many  of  the  nobles  on  either  side,  had  attracted 
an  immense  number  of  high-born  and  strong-handed 
adventurers,  who  amply  supplied  their  place.  The 
clergy  had  been  forced  to  retain  their  original  position 
as  leaders  of  the  popular  mind,  superintendents  of  the 
interests  of  their  flocks,  and  teachers  and  comforters  of 
the  oppressed:  a-Beckett,  therefore,  was  not  in  their 
eyes  an  ambitious  priest,  sacrificing  every  thing  for  the 
elevation  of  his  order.  He  was  a  champion  fighting  the 
battles  of  the  poor  against  the  rich, — a  ransomer  of  at 
least  one  powerful  body  in  the  State  from  the  capricious 
cruelty  of  Henry  and  the  grasping  avarice  of  the  Nor- 
man spoliation.  The  down-trodden  Saxons  received 
with  the  transports  of  gratified  revenge  any  humilia- 
tion inflicted  on  the  proud  aristocracy  which  had  thriven 
on  the  ruin  of  their  ancestors.  The  date  of  the  Con- 
quest was  not  yet  so  distant  as  to  hinder  the  feeling  of 
personal  wrong  from  mingling  in  the  conflict  between 
the  races.  A  man  of  sixty  remembered  the  story  told 
him  by  his  father  of  his  dispossession  of  holt  and  field, 
on  which  the  old  manor-house  had  stood  since  Alfred's 
days,  and  which  now  had  been  converted  into  a  crenO' 


SYMPATHY  WITH   X-BECKETT.  298 

iated  tower  by  the  foreign  conqueror.  Nor  are  we  to 
forget,  in  the  midst  of  the  idea  of  antiquity  conveyed 
at  the  present  time  by  the  fact  of  a  person's  ancestor 
having  "  come  in  with  William/'  that  the  bitterness  of 
dispossession  was  increased  in  the  eyes  of  the  long-de- 
scended Saxon  franklin  by  the  lowness  of  his  disposses- 
Bor's  birth.  Half  the  roll-call  of  the  Norman  army  was 
made  up  of  the  humblest  names, — barbers  and  smiths, 
and  tailors  and  valets,  and  handicraftsmen  of  all  descrip- 
tions. And  yet,  seated  in  his  fortified  keep,  supported 
by  the  sixty  thousand  companions  of  his  success,  en- 
riched by  the  fertile  harvests  of  his  new  domain,  this 
upstart  adventurer  filled  the  wretched  cottages  of  the 
land  with  a  distressed  and  starving  peasantry;  and 
where  were  those  friendless  and  helpless  outcasts  to 
look  for  succour  and  consolation  ?  They  found  them  in 
the  Church.  Their  countrymen  generally  filled  the 
lower  offices,  speaking  in  good  Saxon,  and  feeling  ad 
good  Saxons  should ;  while  the  lordly  abbot  or  luxurious 
bishop  kept  high  state  in  his  monastery  or  palace,  and 
gave  orders  in  Norman  French  with  feelings  as  foreign 
as  his  tongue.  But  a-Beckett  was  an  Englishman; 
a-Beckett  was  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  chief  of 
all  the  churchmen  in  the  land.  To  honour  a-Beckett 
was  to  protest  against  the  Conquest;  and  when  the 
crowning  glory  came,  and  the  crimes  of  Henry  against 
themselves  attained  their  full  consummation  in  the  mur- 
der of  the  prelate  at  the  altar, — the  patriot  m  his  resist- 
ance to  oppression, — the  enthusiasm  of  the  country  knew 
no  bounds.  The  penitential  pilgrimage  which  the  proud- 
est of  the  Plantagenets  made  to  the  tomb  of  his  victim 
was  but  small  compensation  for  so  enormous  a  wicked, 
ness,  and  for  ages  the  name  of  a-Beckett  was  a  house- 
hold word  at  the  hearths  of  the  English  peasantry,  as 
their  great  representative  and  deliverer, — only  complet- 


^94  TWELFTH   CENTURY. 

ing  the  care  he  t^ok  of  their  temporal  interests  while 
on  earth  by  the  superintendence  he  bestowed  on  their 
spiritual  benefit  now  that  he  was  a  saint  in  heaven. 
Curses  fell  upon  the  head  and  heart  of  the  royal  mur- 
derer, as  if  by  a  visible  retribution.  His  children  re- 
belled and  died;  the  survivors  were  false  and  hostile. 
Eichard,  who  had  the  one  sole  virtue  of  animal  courage, 
was  incited  by  his  mother  to  resist  his  father,  and  was 
joined  in  his  unnatural  rebellion  by  his  brother  John, 
who  had  no  virtue  at  all.  His  mind,  before  he  died,  had 
lost  the  energy  which  kept  the  sceptre  steady ;  and  the 
century  went  down  upon  the  glory  of  England,  which 
lay  like  a  wreck  upon  the  water,  and  was  stripped 
gradually,  and  one  by  one,  of  all  the  possessions  which 
had  made  it  great,  and  even  the  traditions  of  military 
power  which  had  made  it  feared.  John  was  on  the 
throne,  and  the  nation  in  discontent. 


THIRTEENTH  CENTURY. 


iEmperacs  of  (germang.  iSmpecors  of  (JO^onisfantinople. 


A.D. 


Otho,  (of  Brunswick.) —    1203.  Isaac. 
{com.)  1204.  Alexis  IV. 

1212.  Frederick  II.  1204.  Ducas,    (Usurper,)     do- 

1247.  William,  (of  Holland.)  throned   by  warriors 

1257.  KicHARD,  (of  Cornwall.)  of  Fourth  Crusade. 

1257.  Alphonso,  (of  Castile.)  j^^^  Empire. 

1273.  Rodolph,  (of  Hapsburg.)  i204.  Baldwyn,  (of  Flanders.) 
1291.  Adolph,  (of  Nassau.)         ^206.  Henry,  (his  brother.) 
1298.  Albert  L,  (of  Austria.)     ^216.  Peter,  (of  Courtney.) 
iXingS  Of  dFrance.  ^219.  Robert,  (Ms  son.) 

Philip  AuGUSTUs.-(conO  ^^^^'  ^^^^^  ^^^  Brienne.) 
1223.  Louis  VIII.  1231.  Baldwyn. 

1226.  Louis  IX.,  (the  Fat.)  Greek  Empire  of  Nicoea. 

1270.  Philip  III.,  (the  Hardy.)  1222.  John  Ducas. 

1285.  Philip  IV.,  (the  Hand-  1255.  Theodorus  II. 

some.)  1261.  John  Lascaris — retakea 

Constantinople. 
Mum  "Bf  SCOtlanlr.  I26I.  Michael. 

William.— (con^)  i282.  Andronicus  II. 

1214.  Alexander  II. 
1249.  Alexander  III.  ItfnQS  Of  iSnglaulJ. 

1286.  Margaret.  John. — {cont.) 
1291.  John  Baliol,  deposed      1216.  Henry  III. 

1296.  1276.  Edward  I. 

1201.  Fourth  Crusade.  1248.  Seventh  Crusade. 

1217.  Fifth  Crusade.  1270.  Eighth  and  Last  Crusade, 

1228.  Sixth  Crusade.  by  St.  Louis  against  Tunis. 

^utjors. 

Roger  Bacon,  Matthew  Paris,  Alexander  Hales,  (Irrefra 
gable  Doctor,)  Thomas  Aquinas,  (the  Angelic  Doctor.) 


THE  THIETEENTH  CENTUEY. 

IIRST     CRUSADE     AGAINST     HERETICS — THE     ALBIQENSE^-- 
MAGNA   CHARTA — EDWARD   I. 

The  progress  and  enlightenment  of  Europe  proceed 
from  this  period  at  a  constantly-increasing  rate.  The 
rise  of  commercial  cities,  the  weakening  of  the  feudal 
aristocracy,  the  introduction  of  the  learning  of  the  Sara- 
cenic schools,  and  the  growth  of  universities  for  the 
cultivation  of  science  and  language,  contributed  greatly 
to  the  result.  Another  cause  used  to  be  assigned  for 
this  satisfactory  advance,  in  the  discovery  which  had 
been  made  in  the  last  century  at  Amalfi,  of  a  copy  of 
the  long-forgotten  Pandects  of  Justinian,  and  the  rein- 
troduction  of  the  Eoman  laws,  in  displacement  of  the 
conflicting  customs  and  barbarous  enactments  of  the 
various  states ;  but  the  fact  of  the  continued  existence 
of  the  Eoman  Institutes  is  not  now  denied,  though  it  is 
probable  that  the  discovery  of  the  Amalfi  manuscript 
may  have  given  a  fresh  impulse  to  the  improvement  of 
the  local  codes.  But  an  increase  of  mental  activity  had 
at  first  its  usual  regretable  accompaniment  in  the  con- 
temporaneous rise  of  dangerous  and  unfounded  opinions. 
Philosophy,  which  began  with  an  admiration  of  the  skill 
and  learning  of  Aristotle,  ended  by  enthroning  him  as 
the  uncontrolled  master  of  human  reason.  Wherever 
he  was  studied,  all  previous  standards  of  faith  and  argu- 
ment were  overthrown.  The  cleverest  intellects  of  the 
time  could  find  themselves  no  higher  task  than  to  re 
eoncile  the  Christian  Scriptures  with  the  decrees  of  the 

237 


298  THIRTEENTH   CENTURST. 

Stagyrite,  for  it  was  felt  that  in  the  case  of  an  iriecoi*' 
cilable  divergence  between  the  teaching  of  Christ  and 
of  Aristotle  the  scholars  of  Christendom  would  have 
pronounced  in  favour  of  the  Greek.  A  formulary, 
indeed,  was  found  out  for  the  joint  reception  of  both ; 
many  statements  were  declared  to  be  "  true  in  philoso- 
phy though  false  in  religion,"  so  that  the  most  orthodox 
of  Churchmen  could  receive  the  doctrines  of  the  Church 
by  an  act  of  belief,  while  he  gave  his  whole  affection  to 
Aristotle  by  an  act  of  the  understanding.  Wlien  teachers 
and  preachers  tamper  with  the  human  conscience,  the 
common  feelings  of  honour  and  fair  play  revolt  at  the 
degrading  attempt.  Men  of  simple  minds,  who  did  not 
profess  to  understand  Aristotle  and  could  not  be  blinded 
by  the  subtleties  of  logic,  endeavoured  to  discover  "  the 
more  excellent  way"  for  themselves,  but  were  bewildered 
by  the  novelty  of  their  search  for  Truth.  There  were 
mystic  dreamers  who  saw  God  everywhere  and  in  every 
thing,  and  counted  human  nature  itself  a  portion  of  the 
Deity,  or  maintained  that  it  was  possible  for  man  to 
attain  a  share  of  the  divine  by  the  practice  of  virtue. 
This  Pantheism  gave  rise  to  numerous  displays  of  popu- 
lar ignorance  and  impressibility.  Messiahs  appeared  in 
many  parts  of  Europe,  and  were  followed  by  great  mul- 
titudes. Some  enthusiasts  taught  that  a  new  dispensa- 
tion was  opening  upon  man ;  that  God  was  the  Gover- 
nor of  the  world  during  the  Old  Testament  period; 
that  Christ  had  reigned  till  now,  but  that  the  reign  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  was  about  to  commence,  and  all  things 
would  be  renewed.  Others,  more  hardy,  declared  their 
adhesion  to  the  Persian  principle  of  a  duality  of  personb 
in  heaven,  and  revived  the  old  Manichean  heresy  that 
the  spirit  of  Hatred  was  represented  in  the  Jewish 
Scriptures  and  the  spirit  of  Love  in  the  Christian ;  that 
the  Good  god  had  created  the  soul,  and  the  Evil  god 


ALBIGENSES.  29? 

tlio  body, — on  which  were  justified  the  sufferings  they 
voluntarily  inflicted  on  the  workmanship  of  Satan,  and 
the  starvings  and  flagellations  required  to  bring  it  into 
subjection.  This  belief  found  few  followers,  and  would 
have  died  out  as  rapidly  as  it  had  arisen ;  but  the  malig- 
nity of  tne  enemies  of  any  change  found  it  convenient 
to  identify  those  wild  enthusiasts  with  a  very  different 
class  of  persons  who  at  this  time  rose  into  prominent 
notice.  The  rich  counties  of  the  South  of  France  were 
always  distinguished  from  the  rest  of  the  nation  by  the 
possession  of  greater  elegance  and  freedom.  The  old 
Eoman  civilization  had  never  entirely  deserted  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean  or  the  valleys  of  Langue- 
doc  and  Provence.  In  Languedoc  a  sect  of  strange 
thinkers  had  given  voice  to  some  startling  doctrines, 
which  at  once  obtained  the  general  consent.  Toulouse 
was  the  chief  encourager  of  these  new  beliefs,  and  in  its 
hostility  to  Eorae  was  supported  by  its  reigning  sovereign, 
Count  Pnymond  YI.  This  potentate,  from  the  position 
of  his  States, — abutting  upon  Barcelona,  where  the 
Spaniards,  who  remembered  their  recent  emancipation 
from  the  Mohammedan  yoke,  were  famous  for  their 
tolerance  of  religious  dissent, — and  deriving  the  greater 
portion  of  his  wealth  from  the  trade  and  industry  of  the 
Jews  and  Arabs  established  in  his  seaport  towns,  saw 
no  great  evil  in  the  principles  professed  by  his  people 
Those  principles,  indeed,  when  stripped  of  the  malicious 
additions  of  his  enemies,  were  not  different  from  the 
ereed  of  Protestantism  at  the  present  time.  They  con- 
sisted merely  of  a  complete  denial  of  the  sovereignty 
of  the  Pope,  the  power  of  the  priesthood,  the  efiicacy 
of  prayers  for  the  dead,  and  the  existence  of  purgatory. 
The  other  princes  of  the  South  looked  on  religion  as  a 
mere  instrument  for  the  advancement  of  their  own  in- 
terests, and  would  have  imitated  the  greater  sovereigns 


500 


THIRTEENTH   CENTURY. 


of  Europe,  several  of  whom  for  a  very  slender  considerfv 
tion  would  have  gone  openly  over  to  the  standard  of 
Mohammed.  The  inhabitants,  therefore,  of  those  opu« 
lent  regions,  by  the  favour  of  Eaymond  and  the  indif- 
ference of  the  rest,  were  left  for  a  long  time  to  their 
own  devices,  and  gave  intimation  of  a  strong  desire  to 
break  off  their  connection  with  the  hierarchy  of  Eome. 
And  no  wonder  they  were  tired  of  their  dependence  on 
fto  grasping  and  unprincipled  a  power  as  the  Church  had 
proved  to  them.  More  depraved  and  more  exacting  in 
this  district  than  in  any  other  part  of  Europe,  the  clergy 
had  contrived  to  alienate  the  hearts  of  the  common 
people  without  gaining  the  friendship  of  the  nobility. 
Equally  hated  by  both, — despised  for  their  sensuality, 
and  no  longer  feared  for  their  spiritual  power, — ^the 
priests  could  offer  no  resistance  to  the  progress  of  the 
new  opinions.  Those  opinions  were  in  fact  as  much  due 
to  the  vices  of  the  clergy  as  to  the  convictions  of  the 
congregations.  Any  thing  hostile  to  Eome  was  wel- 
comed by  the  people.  A  musical  and  graceful  language 
had  grown  up  in  Languedoc,  which  was  universally 
recognised  as  the  fittest  vehicle  for  descriptions  of 
beauty  and  declarations  of  love,  and  had  been  found 
equally  adapted  for  the  declamations  of  political  hatred 
and  denunciations  of  injustice.  But  now  the  whole 
guild  of  troubadours,  ceasing  to  dedicate  their  muses  to 
ladies'  charms  or  the  quarrels  of  princes,  poured  forth 
their  indignation  in  innumerable  songs  on  their  clerical 
oppressors.  The  infamies  of  the  whole  order — the  monks 
black  and  white,  the  deacons,  the  abbots,  the  bishops, 
the  ordinary  priests — were  now  married  to  immortal 
verse.  Their  spoiling  of  orphans,  their  swindling  of 
widows  and  wards,  their  gluttony  and  drunkenness, 
were  chronicled  in  every  township,  and  were  incapable 
of  denial.     Their  dishonesty  became  proverbial.     The 


DOMINIC. 


301 


simplest  peasant,  on  hearing  of  a  scaudalc^s  action,  was 
m  the  habit  of  saying,  "  I  would  rather  be  a  priest  than 
be  guilty  of  such  a  deed."  But  there  were  two  men 
then  alive  exactly  adapted  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  the 
time.  One  was  a  noble  Castilian  of  the  name  of  Dominic 
Guzman,  who  had  become  disgusted  with  the  world,  and 
had  taken  refuge  from  temptations  and  strife  among  the 
brethren  of  a  reformed  cathedral  in  Spain.  But  tempta- 
tions and  strife  forced  their  way  into  the  cells  of  Asma, 
and  the  eloquent  friar  was  torn  away  from  his  prayers 
and  penances  and  brought  prominently  forward  by  the 
backsHdings  of  the  men  of  Languedoc.  The  saturnine 
and  self-sacrificing  Spaniard  had  no  sympathy  with  the 
joyous  proceedings  of  the  princes  and  merchants  of  the 
South.  He  saw  sin  in  their  enjoyment  even  of  the  gifts 
of  nature, — their  gracious  air  and  beautiful  scenery. 
How  •much  more  when  the  gayety  of  their  meetings 
was  enlivened  by  interludes  throwing  ridicule  on  the 
pretensions  of  the  bishops,  by  hootings  at  any  ecclesiastic 
who  presented  himself  in  the  street,  and  by  sneers  and 
loud  laughter  at  the  predictions  and  miracles  with  which 
the  Church  resisted  their  attack!  The  unbelieving 
populace  did  not  spare  the  personal  dignity  of  the  mis- 
sionary himself.  They  pelted  him  with  mud,  and  fixed 
long  tails  of  straw  at  the  back  of  his  robe;  they  out- 
raged all  the  feelings  of  his  heart,  his  Castilian  pride, 
his  Christian  belief,  his  clerical  obedience.  There  is  no 
denying  the  energy  with  which  he  exerted  himself  to 
recall  those  wandering  sheep  to  the  true  fold.  His 
biographer  tells  us  of  the  successes  of  his  eloquence, 
and  of  the  irresistible  effect  of  the  inexhaustible  foun- 
tain of  tears  with  which  he  inundated  his  face  till  they 
formed  a  river  down  to  his  robes.  His  writings,  we  are 
assured,  being  found  unanswerable  by  the  heretics, 
were  submitted  to  the  ordeal  of  fire.     Twice  they  re- 


S02 


THIRTEENTH   CENTURY. 


sisted  the  hottest  flames  which  could  be  raised  by  wood 
and  brimstone,  and  still  without  converting  the  incredu- 
lous subjects  of  Count  Eaymond.  His  miracles,  which 
were  numerous  and  undeniable,  also  had  no  effect. 
Even  his  prayers,  which  seem  to  have  moved  houses 
and  walls,  had  no  efficacy  in  moving  the  obdurate 
hearts  of  the  unbelievers;  and  at  last,  tired  out  with 
their  recalcitrancy,  the  dreadful  word  was  spoken.  He 
cursed  the  men  of  Languedoc,  the  inhabitants  of  its 
towns,  the  knights  and  gentlemen  who  received  his 
oratory  with  insult,  and  in  addition  to  his  own  anathemas 
called  in  the  spiritual  thunder  of  the  Pope. 

This  was  the  other  man  peculiarly  fitted  for  the  work  he 
had  to  do.  His  cruelty  would  have  done  no  dishonour 
to  the  blood-stained  scutcheon  of  Nero,  and  his  ambition 
transcended  that  of  Gregory  the  Seventh.  His  name  was 
^^  ^207.  J^PQcent  tho  Third.  For  one-half  of  the  crimes 
alleged  against  those  heretics,  who,  from  their 
principal  seat  in  the  diocese  of  Albi,  were  known  as  All^i- 
ggnses,  he  would  have  turned  the  whole  of  France  into  a 
desert;  and  when,  with  greedy  ear,  he  heard  the  denun- 
ciations of  Dominic,  he  declared  war  on  the  devoted  pea- 
sants,— war  on  the  consenting  princes;  a  holy  war — ^more 
meritorious  than  a  Crusade  against  the  Turks  and  infidels 
— where  no  life  was  to  be  spared,  and  where  houses  and 
lands  were  to  be  the  reward  of  the  assailants.  All  the  wild 
spirits  of  the  age  were  wakened  by  the  call.  It  was  a  pil- 
grimage where  all  expenses  were  paid,  without  the  danger 
of  the  voyage  to  the  East  or  the  sword  of  the  Saracen. 
Foremost  among  those  who  hurried  to  this  mingled  har- 
dest of  money  and  blood,  of  religious  absolution  and  mili- 
tary fame,  was  the  notorious  Simon  de  Montfort,  a  man 
fitted  for  the  commission  of  any  wickedness  requiring  a 
powerful  arm  and  unrelenting  heart.  Forward  from  all 
quarters  of  Europe  rushed  the  exterminating  emissariep 


DE   MONTFORT. 


308 


of  tho  Pope  and  soldiers  of  Dominic.  "  You  shall  ravage 
every  field  j  you  shall  slay  every  human  being :  strike, 
and  spare  not.  The  measure  of  their  iniquity  is  full,  and 
the  blessing  of  the  Church  is  on  your  heads."  These 
words,  sung  in  sweet  chorus  by  the  Pope  and  the  Monk, 
were  the  instructions  on  which  De  Montfort  was  pre- 
pared to  act;  and  what  could  the  sunny  Languedoc, 
the  land  of  song  and  dance,  of  olive-yard  and  vineyard, 
do  to  repel  this  hostile  inroad?  Suddenly  all  the  music 
of  the  troubadours  was  hushed  in  dreadful  expectation. 
Eaymond  was  alarmed,  and  tried  to  temporize.  Pro- 
mises were  made  and  explanations  given,  but  without 
any  offer  of  submission  to  the  yoke  of  Eome :  so  the 
infuriated  warriors  came  on,  burning,  slaying, 
ravaging,  in  terms  of  their  commission,  till 
Dominic  himself  grew  ashamed  of  such  blood-stained 
missionaries ;  and  when  their  slaughters  went  on,  when 
they  had  murdered  half  the  population  in  cold  blood, 
and  ridden  down  the  peasantry  whom  despair  had  sum- 
moned to  the  defence  of  their  houses  and  properties,  tho 
saintly-minded  Spaniard  could  no  longer  honour  their 
hideous  butcheries  with  his  presence.  He  contented 
himself  with  retiring  to  a  church  and  praying  for  the 
jrood  cause  with  such  zeal  and  animation  that  De  Mont- 
fort  and  eleven  hundred  of  his  ruffians  put  to  flight  a 
hundred  thousand  of  the  armed  soldiers  of  the  South, 
who  felt  themselves  overthrown  and  scattered  by  an  in- 
visible power.  Yet  not  even  the  prayers  of  Dominic 
could  keep  the  outraged  people  in  unresisting  acquies- 
cence. Simon  de  Montfort  was  expelled  from  the  ter- 
ritories he  had  usurped,  and  found  a  mysterious  death 
under  the  walls  of  Toulouse  in  1218. 
The  old  family  was  restored  in  the  person  of  Kay- 
mond  tho  Seventh,  and  preparations  made  for 
'  defence.    But  Louis  the  Eighth  of  France  cam<» 


^0*  THIRrEENTH   CENTURY. 

to  the  aid  of  the  infuriated  Pope.  Two  hundred  thou« 
sand  men  followed  in  the  holy  campaign.  All  th« 
atrocities  of  the  former  time  were  renewed  and  sur- 
passed. Town  after  town  yielded,  for  all  the  defenders 
had  died.  Pestilence  broke  out  in  the  invading  force, 
and  Louis  himself  was  carried  off  by  fiver.  Champions, 
however,  were  ready  in  all  quarters  to  carry  on  the 
glorious  cause.  Louis  the  Ninth  was  now  King  of 
JFrance,  and  under  the  government  of  his  mother, 
Blanche  of  Castile,  the  work  commenced  by  her  country- 
man was  completed.  The  final  victory  of  the  crusaders 
and  punishment  of  the  rebellious  were  celebrated  by  the 
introduction  of  the  Inquisition,  of  which  the  ferocious 
Dominic  was  the  presiding  spirit.  The  fire  of  persecu- 
tion under  his  holy  stirrings  burnt  up  what  the  sword 
of  the  destroyer  had  left,  and  from  that  time  the  voice 
of  rejoicing  was  heard  no  more  in  Languedoc:  her  free- 
dom of  thought  and  elegance  of  sentiment  were  equally 
crushed  into  silence  by  the  heel  of  persecution.  The 
"gay  science"  perished  utterly;  the  very  language  in 
which  the  sonnets  of  knight  and  troubadour  nad  been 
composed  died  away  from  the  literatures  of  the  earth ; 
and  Eome  rejoiced  in  the  destruction  of  poetry  and  the 
restoration  of  obedience.  This  is  a  very  mark-worthy 
incident  in  the  thirteenth  century,  as  it  is  the  first  ex- 
periment, on  a  great  scale,  which  the  Church  made  to 
retain  her  supremacy  by  force  of  arms.  The  pagan  and 
infidel,  the  denier  of  Christ  and  the  enemies  of  his 
teaching,  had  hitherto  been  the  objects  of  the  wrath  of 
Christendom.  This  is  the  first  instance  in  which  a  dif- 
ference of  opinion  between  Christians  themselves  had 
been  the  ground  for  wholesale  extermination ;  for  those 
unfortunate  Albigenses  acknowledged  the  divinity  of 
the  Saviour  and  professed  to  be  his  disciples.  It  is  the 
crowning  proof  of  the  totally-secularized  nature  of  the  es« 


PEACE   OF   LANGUEDOC.  308 

tabJished  faith.  Its  weapons  were  no  longer  argument  and 
proof,  or  even  persuasion  and  promise.  The  horse  up  to 
his  fetlocks  in  blood,  the  sword  waved  in  the  air,  the  tramp- 
ling of  marshalled  thousands,  were  henceforth  the  sup- 
ports of  the  religion  of  love  and  charity;  and  fires 
glowing  in  every  market-place  and  dungeons  gaping  in 
every  episcopal  castle  were  henceforth  the  true  exposi- 
tors of  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus.  Fires,  indeed,  and 
dungeons,  were  required  to  compensate  for  the  incom- 
pleteness, as  it  appeared  to  the  truly  orthodox,  of  the 
vengeance  inflicted  on  the  rebels.  The  Abbot  of 
Citeaux,  who  gave  his  spiritual  and  corporeal  aid  to  the 
assault  on  Beziers,  was  for  a  moment  made  uneasy  by 
the  diflSculty  his  men  experienced  in  distinguishing  be- 
tween the  heretics  and  believers  at  the  storm  of  the 
town.  At  last  he  got  out  of  the  difficulty  by  saying, 
"  Slay  them  all !  The  Lord  will  know  his  own."  The 
same  benevolent  dignitary,  when  he  wrote  an  account 
of  his  achievement  to  the  Pope,  lamented  that  he  had 
only  been  able  to  cut  the  throats  of  twenty  thousand. 
And  Gregory  the  Ninth  would  have  been  better  pleased 
if  it  had  been  twice  the  number.  "His  vast  revenge 
had  stomach  for  them  all,"  and  already  a  quarter  of  a 
million  of  the  population  were  the  victims  of  his  anger. 
Every  thing  had  prospered  to  his  hand.  Eaymond  was 
despoiled  of  the  greater  portion  of  his  estates,  the  voice 
of  opposition  was  hushed,  the  castles  of  the  nobles  con- 
fiscated to  the  Church ;  and  yet,  when  the  treaty  of 
Meaux,  in  1229,  by  which  the  war  was  concluded,  came 
io  be  considered,  it  was  perceived  that  the  pacification 
of  Languedoc  turned  not  so  much  to  the  profit  of  Eome 
as  of  the  rapidly-coalescing  monarchy  of  France. 

Long  before  this,  in  1204,  Philip  Augustus  had  found 
little  difficulty  in  tearing  the  continental  possessions  of 
^ho  English  crown,  except  Guienno,  from  the  trembling 


506  THIRTEENTH   CENTURY. 

hands  of  John.  The  possession  of  Normandy  had  already 
made  France  a  maritime  power ;  and  now,  by  the  acqui- 
sition of  the  Narbonnais  and  Maguelonne  from  Eaymond 
the  Seventh,  she  not  only  extended  her  limits  to  the 
Mediterranean,  but,  by  the  extinction  of  two  such  vas- 
sals as  the  Count  of  Toulouse  and  the  Duke  of  Nor- 
mandy, incalculably  strengthened  the  royal  crown.  Ex- 
tinguished, indeed,  was  the  power  of  Toulouse ;  for  by 
the  same  treaty  the  unfortunate  Eaymond  bought  his 
peace  with  Eome  by  bestowing  the  county  of  Yenaissin 
and  half  of  Avignon  on  the  Holy  See.  These  sacrifices 
relieved  him  from  the  sentence  of  excommunication, 
and  made  him  the  best-loved  son  of  the  Church,  and  the 
poorest  prince  in  Christendom. 

"While  monarchy  was  making  such  strides  in  France, 
a  counterbalancing  power  was  formed  in  England  by 
the  combination  of  the  nobility  and  the  rise  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  The  story  of  Magna  Charta  is  so 
well  known  that  it  will  be  suflScient  to  recall  some  of  its 
principal  incidents,  which  could  not  with  propriety  be 
omitted  in  an  account  of  the  important  events  of  the 
thirteenth  century.  No  event,  indeed,  of  equal  import- 
ance occurred  in  any  other  country  of  Europe.  How- 
ever more  startling  a  crusade  or  a  victory  might  be  at 
the  time,  the  results  of  no  single  incident  have  ever  been 
BO  enduring  or  so  wide-spread  as  those  of  the  meeting 
of  the  barons  at  Eunnymede  and  the  summoning  of  the 
burgesses  to  Parliament. 

The  whole  reign  of  John  (1199-1216)  is  a  tale  of 
wickedness  and  degradation.  Eichard  of  the  Lion- 
Heart  had  been  cruel  and  unprincipled ;  but  the  sharp- 
ness of  his  sword  threw  a  sort  of  respectability  over  the 
worst  portions  of  his  character.  His  practical  talents, 
also,  and  the  romantic  incidents  of  his  life,  his  confine* 
ment,  and  even  of  his  death,  lifted  him  out  of  the  ordi- 


JOHN   OF   ENGLAND.  307 

naiy  category  of  brutal  and  selfish  kings  and  converted 
a  very  ferocious  warrior  into  a  popular  hero.  But  John 
was  hateful  and  contemptible  in  an  equal  degree.  Ho 
deserted  his  father,  he  deceived  his  brother,  he  murdered 
his  nephew,  he  oppressed  his  people.  He  had  the  pride 
that  made  enemies,  and  wanted  the  courage  to  fight 
them.  A  knight  without  truth,  a  king  without  justice, 
a  Christian  without  faith, — all  classes  rebelled  against 
him.  Innocent  the  Third  scented  from  afar  the  advan- 
tage he  might  obtain  from  a  monarch  whose  nobility 
despised  him  and  who  was  hated  by  his  people.  And 
when  John  got  up  a  quarrel  about  the  nomination  of  an 
archbishop  to  Canterbury,  the  Pope  soon  saw  that 
though  Langton  was  no  a-Beckctt,  still  less  was  John 
a  Henry  the  Second.  A  sentence  of  excommunication 
was  launched  at  the  coward's  head,  and  the  crown  of 
England  offered  to  Philip  Augustus  of  Prance.  Philip 
Augustus  had  the  modesty  to  refuse  the  splendid  bribe, 
and  contented  himself  with  aiding  to  weaken  a  throne 
he  did  not  feel  inclined  to  fill.  It  is  characteristic  of 
John,  that  in  the  agonies  of  his  fear,  and  of  his  desire 
to  gain  support  against  his  people,  he  hesitated  between 
invoking  the  assistance  of  the  Miramolin  of  Morocco 
and  the  Pope  of  Eome.  As  good  Mussulman  with  the 
one  as  Christian  with  the  other,  he  finally  decided  on 
Innocent,  and  signed  a  solemn  declaration  of  submission, 
making  public  resignation  of  the  crowns  of  England 
and  Ireland  "  to  the  Apostles  Peter  and  Paul,  to  Inno- 
cent and  his  legitimate  successors;"  and,  aided  by  the 
blessings  of  these  new  masters,  and  by  the  enforced 
neutrality  of  France,  he  was  enabled  to  defeat  his  in- 
dignant nobles^  and  force  them  for  two  years  to  wear 
the  same  chains  of  submission  to  Eome  which  weighed 
upon  himself  But  in  1215  the  patience  of  noble  and 
peasant,  of  bishop  and  priest,  was  utterly  exhausted 


^08  THIRTEENTH   CENTURY. 

John  fled  on  the  first  outburst  of  the  collected  storm^ 
1''15  ^^^  thought  himself  fortunate  in  stopping  its 
violence  by  signing  the  Great  Charter,  the 
written  ratification  of  the  liberties  which  had  been  con- 
ferred by  some  of  his  predecessors,  but  whose  chief 
authority  was  in  the  traditions  and  customs  of  the  land. 
This  was  not  an  overthrow  of  an  old  constitution  and 
the  substitution  of  a  new  and  different  code,  but  merely 
a  formal  recognition  of  the  great  and  fundamental 
principles  on  which  only  government  can  be  carried 
on, — security  of  person  and  property,  and  the  just  ad- 
ministration of  equitable  laws.  All  orders  in  the  State 
were  comprehended  in  this  national  agreement.  The 
Church  was  delivered  from  the  exactions  of  the  king, 
and  left  to  an  undisturbed  intercourse  on  spiritual 
matters  with  her  spiritual  head.  She  was  to  have  per- 
fect freedom  of  election  to  vacant  benefices,  and  the 
king's  rapacity  was  guarded  against  by  a  clause  re- 
ducing any  fine  he  might  impose  on  an  ecclesiastic  to  an 
accordance  with  his  professional  income,  and  not  with 
the  extent  of  his  lay  possessions.  The  barons,  of  course, 
took  equal  care  of  their  own  interests  as  they  had 
shown  for  those  of  the  Church.  They  corrected  many 
abuses  from  which  they  suffered,  in  respect  to  their  feu- 
dal obligations.  They  regulated  the  fines  and  quit-rents 
on  succession  to  their  fiefs,  the  management  of  crown 
wards,  and  the  marriage  of  heiresses  and  widows.  They 
insisted  also  on  the  assemblage  of  a  council  of  the  great 
and  lesser  barons,  to  consult  for  the  general  weal,  and 
put  some  check  on  the  disposal  of  their  lands  by  their 
tenants,  in  order  to  keep  their  vassals  from  impoverish- 
ment and  their  military  organization  unimpaired.  But 
when  church  and  aristocracy  were  thus  protected  from 
the  tyranny  of  the  king,  were  the  interests  of  the  great 
mass  of  the  people  neglected?    This  has  sometimes 


MAGNA   CHARTA.  309 

been  arged  against  the  legislators  of  Kunnymede,  but 
very  unjustly;  for  as  much  attention  was  paid  to  the 
aberties  and  immunities  of  the  municipal  corporations 
and  of  ordinary  subjects  as  to  those  of  the  prelates  and 
lords.  Every  person  had  the  right  to  dispose  of  his 
property  by  will.  ]^o  arbitrary  tolls  could  be  exacted 
of  merchants.  All  men  might  enter  or  leave  the  king- 
dom without  restraint.  The  courts  of  law  were  no 
longer  to  bo  stationary  at  Westminster,  to  which  com- 
plainants from  Northumberland  or  Cornwall  never  could 
make  their  way,  but  were  to  travel  about,  bringing  jus- 
tice to  every  man's  door.  They  wero  to  be  open  to 
every  one,  and  justice  was  to  be  neither  "  sold,  refused, 
nor  delayed."  Circuits  were  to  be  held  every  year.  No 
man  was  to  be  put  on  his  trial  from  mere  rumour,  but 
on  the  evidence  of  lawful  witnesses.  No  sentence  could 
be  passed  on  a  freeman  except  by  his  peers  in  jury  as- 
sembled. No  fine  could  be  imposed  so  exorbitant  as  to 
ruin  the  culprit.  But  the  bishops  and  clergy,  the  nobility 
and  their  vassals,  the  corporations  and  freemen,  were 
not  the  main  bodies  of  the  State ;  and  the  framers  of 
Magna  Charta  have  been  blamed  for  neglecting  the  great 
majority  of  the  population,  which  consisted  of  serfs  or 
villeins.  This  accusation  is,  however,  not  true,  even 
with  respect  to  the  words  of  the  Charter;  for  it  is  ex- 
pressly provided  that  the  carts  and  working-implements 
of  that  class  of  the  people  shall  not  be  seizable  in  satis- 
faction of  a  fine ;  and  in  its  intention  the  accusation  is 
more  untenable  still;  for  although  the  reformers  of  1215 
bad  no  design  of  granting  new  privileges  to  any  hitherto- 
unprivileged  order  and  their  work  was  limited  to  the 
legal  re-establishment  of  privileges  which  John  had  at- 
tempted to  overthrow,  the  large  and  liberal  spirit  of 
their  declarations  is  shown  hf  the  notice  they  take  of 
the  hitherto-un  considered  classes.     For  the  protection 


^1^  THIRTEENTH   CENTURY. 

accorded  to  their  ploughs  and  carts,  which  are  spccifi 
cally  named  in  the  Charter,  ratified  at  once  their  right 
to  hold  property, — the  first  condition  of  personal  free- 
dom and  independence, — and,  by  an  analogy  of  rcaeon- 
ing,  restrained  their  more  immediate  masters  from 
tyranny  and  injustice.  It  could  not  be  long  before  a 
man  secured  by  the  national  voice  in  the  possession  of 
one  species  of  property  extended  his  rights  over  every 
thing  else.  If  the  law  guaranteed  him  the  plough  he 
held,  the  cart  he  drove,  the  spade  he  plied,  why  not  the 
house  he  occupied,  the  little  field  he  cultivated  ?  And 
if  the  poorest  freeman  walked  abroad  in  the  pride  of  in- 
dependence, because  the  baron  could  no  longer  insult 
him,  or  the  priest  oppress  him,  or  the  king  himself  strip 
him  of  land  and  gear,  how  could  he  deny  the  samo 
blessings  to  his  neighbour,  the  rustic  labourer,  who  w^is 
already  master  of  cart  and  plough  and  was  probably 
richer  and  better  fed  than  himself? 

But  a  firmer  barrier  against  the  encroachments  of 
kings  and  nobles  than  the  written  words  of  Magna 
Charta  was  still  required,  and  people  were  not  long  in 
seeing  how  little  to  be  trusted  are  legal  forms  when  the 
contracting  parties  are  disposed  to  evade  their  obliga- 
tions. John  indeed  attempted,  in  the  very  year  that 
saw  his  signature  to  the  Charter,  to  expunge  his  name 
from  the  obligatory  deed  by  the  plenary  power  of  the 
Pope.  Innocent  had  no  scruple  in  giving  permission  to 
his  English  vassal  to  break  the  oath  and  swerve  from 
his  engagement.  But  the  English  spirit  was  not  so 
broken  as  the  king's,  and  the  barons  took  the  manage- 
ment of  the  country  into  their  own  hands.  When  the 
experience  of  a  few  years  of  Henry  the  Third  had 
shown  them  that  there  was  no  improvement  on  the 
personal  character  of  his'predecessor,  they  took  effectual 
measures  for  the  protection  of  all  classes  of  the  people. 


SAINT   LOUIS.  311 

Henry  began  his  inglorious  reign  in  1216,  and  ended  it 
in  1272.  In  those  fifty-sLs  years  great  changes  took 
place,  but  all  in  an  upward  direction,  out  of  the  dark- 
ness and  unimpressionable  stolidity  of  previous  ages. 
The  dawn  of  a  more  intellectual  period  seemed  at  hand, 
and  ah-eady  the  ghosts  of  ignorance  and  oppression 
began  to  scent  the  morning  air.  In  1264  an  example 
was  set  by  England  which  it  would  have  been  well  if  all 
the  other  Western  lands  had  followed,  for  by  the  insti- 
tution of  a  true  House  of  Commons  it  laid  the  foundii- 
tion  for  the  only  possible  liberal  and  improvable  govern- 
ment,— the  only  government  which  can  derive  its 
strength  from  the  consent  of  the  governed  legitimately 
expressed,  and  vary  in  its  action  and  spirit  with  the 
changes  in  the  general  mind.  In  cases  of  error  or  tem- 
porary delusion,  there  is  always  left  the  most  admirable 
machinery  for  retracing  its  steps  and  rectifying  what  is 
wrong.  In  cases  of  universal  approval  and  unanimous 
exertion,  there  is  no  power,  however  skilfully  wielded 
by  autocrats  or  despots,  which  can  compare  with  the 
combined  energy  of  a  whole  and  undivided  people. 

The  contemporary  of  this  Heniy  on  the  throne  of 
A.D.  1226  France  was  the  gentle  and  honest  Louis  the 
-1270.  i^inth.  If  those  epithets  do  not  sound  so  high 
as  the  usual  phraseology  applied  to  kings,  we  are  to 
consider  how  rare  are  the  examples  either  of  honesty  or 
gentleness  among  the  rulers  of  that  time,  and  how  diffi- 
cult it  was  to  possess  or  exercise  those  virtues.  But 
this  gentle  and  honest  king,  who  was  scarcely  raised  iD 
rank  when  the  Church  had  canonized  him  as  a  saint, 
achieved  as  great  successes  by  the  mere  strength  of  his 
character  as  other  monarchs  had  done  by  fire  and  sword. 
His  love  of  justice  enabled  him  to  extend  the  royal 
power  over  his  contending  vassals,  who  chose  him  as 
umpire  of  their  quarrels  and  continued  to  submit  to  him 


812  THIRTEENTH   CENTURY. 

as  their  chief.  He  heard  the  complaints  of  the  lower 
orders  of  his  people  in  person,  sitting,  like  the  kings  of 
the  East;  under  the  shade  of  a  tree,  and  delivering 
judgment  solely  on  the  merits  of  the  case.  His  un- 
doubted zeal  on  behalf  of  his  religion  permitted  him, 
without  the  accusation  of  heresy,  to  put  boundaries  to 
the  aggressions  of  the  Church.  He  resisted  its  more 
violent  claims,  and  gave  liberty  to  ecclesiastics  as  well 
as  laymen,  who  were  equally  interested  in  the  curtail- 
ment of  the  Papal  power.  He  granted  a  great  number 
of  municipal  charters,  and  published  certain  Establish- 
ments, as  they  were  called,  which  were  improvements 
on  the  old  customs  of  the  realm  and  were  in  a  great 
measure  founded  on  the  Roman  law.  The  spirit  of  the 
time  was  popular  progress;  and  both  in  France  and 
England  great  advances  were  made;  deliberative  national 
assemblies  took  their  rise, — in  France,  under  the  con- 
scientious monarch,  with  the  full  aid  and  influence  of 
the  royal  authority,  in  England,  under  the  feeble  and 
selfish  Henry,  by  the  necessity  of  gaining  the  aid  of  the 
Commons  against  the  Crown  to  the  outraged  and  in- 
sulted nobility.  In  both  nations  these  assemblies  bore 
for  a  long  time  very  distinguishable  marks  of  their 
origin.  The  Parliaments  of  France,  sprung  from  the 
royal  will,  were  little  else  than  the  recorders  of  the  decrees 
of  the  monarch ;  while  the  Parliaments  of  England,  re- 
membering their  popular  origin,  have  always  had  a 
feeling  of  independence,  and  a  tendency  to  make  rather 
hard  bargains  with  our  kings.  Even  before  this  time 
the  Great  Council  had  occasionally  opposed  the  exactions 
of  the  Crown ;  but  when  the  falsehood  and  avarice  of 
Henry  III.  had  excited  the  popular  odium,  the  barons 
of  1263,  in  noble  emulation  of  their  predecessors  of 
1216,  had  risen  in  defence  of  the  nation^s  liberties,  and 
the  last  hand  was  put  to  the  building  up  of  our  present 


PAPAL   TRIUMPHS.  313 

constitution,  by  the  summoning,  "  to  consult  on  public 
affairs,"  of  certain  burgesses  from  the  towns,  in  addition 
to  the  prelates,  knights,  and  freeholders  who  had  hitherto 
constituted  the  parliamentary  body.  Eut  those  barons 
and  tenants-in-chief  attended  in  their  own  right,  and 
were  altogether  independent  of  the  principle  of  election 
and  representation.  The  summons  issued  by 
Simon  de  Montfort  (son  of  the  truculent  hero 
of  the  Albigensian  crusade,  and  brother-in-law  of  Henry) 
invested  with  new  privileges  the  already-enfranchised 
boroughs.  From  this  time  the  representatives  of  the 
Commons  are  always  mentioned  in  the  history  of  par- 
liaments ;  and  although  this  proceeding  of  De  Montfort 
was  only  intended  to  strengthen  his  hands  against  his 
enemies,  and,  after  his  temporary  object  was  gained, 
was  not  designed  to  have  any  further  effect  on  the  con- 
stitutional progress  of  our  country,  still,  the  principle 
had  been  adopted,  the  example  was  set,  and  the  right  to 
be  represented  in  Parliament  became  one  of  the  most 
valued  privileges  of  the  enfranchised  commons. 

It  is  observable  that  this  increase  of  civil  freedom  in 
the  various  countries  of  Europe  was  almost  in  exact 
proportion  to  the  diminution  of  ecclesiastical  power.  It 
is  equally  observable  that  the  weakening  of  the  priestly 
influence  rapidly  followed  the  infamous  excesses  into 
which  its  intolerance  and  pride  had  hurried  the  princes 
ind  other  supporters  of  its  claims.  Never,  indeed,  had 
it  appeared  in  so  palmy  and  flourishing  a  state  as  in  the 
course  of  this  century ;  and  yet  the  downward  journey 
was  begun.  The  devastation  it  carried  into  Languedoc, 
and  the  depopulation  of  all  those  sunny  regions  near  the 
Mediterranean  Sea — the  crusades  against  the  Saracens 
in  Asia,  to  which  it  sent  the  strength  of  Europe,  and 
against  the  Moors  in  Africa,  to  which  it  impelled  the 
most  obedient,  and   also,  when   his  religious  passions 


I 

il4  THIRTEENTH   CENTURl. 

were  roused,  the  most  relentless,  of  the  Church's  sons,  do 
other  than  St.  Louis — and  the  submission  of  the  Patri- 
archates of  Jerusalem  and  Alexandria  to  the  Eomish 
See — these  and  other  victories  of  the  Church  were  suc- 
ceeded, before  the  century  closed,  by  a  manifest  though 
silent  insurrection  against  its  spiritual  domination. 
There  were  many  reasons  for  this.  The  inferior  though 
still  dignified  clergy  in  the  differ ent  nations  were  alien- 
ated by  the  excessive  exactions  of  their  foreign  head- 
In  France  the  submissive  St.  Louis  was  forced  to  be- 
come the  guardian  of  the  privileges  and  iucome  of  the 
Galilean  Church.  In  England  the  number  of  Italian  in- 
cumbents exceeded  that  of  the  English-born ;  and  in  a 
few  years  the  Pope  managed  to  draw  from  the  Church 
and  State  an  amount  equal  to  fifteen  millions  of  our 
present  coin.  In  Scotland,  poorer  and  more  proud,  the 
king  united  himself  to  his  clergy  and  nobles,  and  would 
not  permit  the  Romish  exactors  to  enter  his  dominions. 
The  avarice  and  venality  of  Eome  were  repulsive  equally 
to  priest  and  layman.  The  strong  support,  also,  which 
hitherto  had  arisen  to  the  Holy  See  from  the  innumerable 
monks  and  friars,  could  no  longer  be  furnished  by  the 
depressed  and  vitiated  communities  whom  the  coarsest 
of  the  common  people  despised  for  their  sensuality 
and  vice.  In  earlier  times  the  worldly  pretensions  of 
the  secular  clergy  were  put  to  shame  by  the  poverty 
and  self-denial  of  the  regular  orders.  Their  ascetic  re- 
tirement, and  fastings,  and  scourgings,  had  recommended 
them  to  the  peasantry  round  their  monasteries,  by  the 
contrast  their  peaceful  lives  presented  to  the  pomp  and 
gelf-indulgence  of  bishops  and  priests.  But  now  the 
character  of  the  two  classes  was  greatly  changed.  The 
parson  of  the  parish,  when  he  was  not  an  Italian  ab- 
sentee, was  an  English  clergyman,  whose  interests  and 
feelings  were  all  in  unison  with  those  of  his  floek;  tlie 


WEAKENING   OF  THE   PRIESILY   INFLUENCE.         315 

monks  were  an  army  of  mercenary  marauders  in  the 
Borvice  of  a  foreign  prince,  advocating  his  most  un- 
popular demands  and  living  in  the  ostentatious  dis- 
regard of  all  their  vows.  Even  the  lowest  class  of  all, 
the  thralls  and  villeins,  were  not  so  much  as  before  in 
favour  of  their  tonsured  brothers,  who  had  escaped  tbo 
labours  of  the  field  by  taking  refuge  in  the  abbey ;  for 
Magna  Charta  had  given  the  same  protection  against 
oppression  to  themselves,  and  the  enfranchisement  of 
the  boroughs  had  put  power  into  the  hands  of  citizens 
and  freemen,  who  would  not  be  so  apt  to  abuse  it  as  the 
martial  baron  or  mitred  prelate  had  been.  The  same 
principles  were  at  work  in  France ;  and  when  the  newly- 
established  Franciscans  and  Dominicans  were  pointed  to 
as  restoring  the  purity  and  abnegation  of  the  monks  of 
old,  the  time  for  belief  in  those  virtues  being  inherent, 
or  even  possible,  in  a  cloister,  was  past,  and  little  effect 
was  produced  in  favour  of  Eome  by  the  bloodthirsty 
brotherhood  of  the  ferocious  St.  Dominic  or  the  more 
amiable  professions  of  the  half-witted  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi.   The  tide,  indeed,  had  so  completely  turned  after 

,„^„  the  commencement  of  the  rei^n  of  Edward  the 
A.D.  1272.  ° 

First,  that  the  Churchmen,  both  in  England  and 
France,  preferred  being  taxed  by  their  own  Sovereign 
to  being  subjected  to  the  arbitrary  exactions  of  the  Poj^e. 
Edward  gave  them  no  exemption  from  the  obligation  to 
support  the  expenses  of  the  State  in  common  with  all 
the  other  holders  of  property,  and  pressed,  indeed, 
rather  more  heavily  upon  the  prelates  and  rich  clergy 
than  on  the  rest  of  the  contributors,  as  if  to  drive  to  a 
decision  the  question,  to  which  of  the  potentates — the 
Pope  or  the  sovereign — tribute  was  lawfully  due. 
When  this  object  was  gained,  a  bull  was  let  loose  upon 
the  sacrilegious  monarch  by  Boniface  the  Eighth,  which 
positively  forbids  any  member  of  the  priesthood  to  con- 


S16 


THIRTEENTH   CENTURY. 


tribute  to  the  national  exchequer  on  my  occasion  or 
emergency  whatever.  But  the  king  made  very  light  of 
the  papal  authority  when  it  stood  between  him  and  the 
revenues  of  his  crown,  and  the  national  clergy  sub- 
mitted to  be  taxed  like  other  men.  In  France  the  same 
discussion  led  to  the  same  result.  The  Galilean  and 
English  Churches  asserted  their  liberties  in  a  way  which 
must  have  been  peculiarly  gratifying  to  the  kings, — 
namely,  by  subsidies  to  the  Crown,  and  disobedience  to 
the  fulminations  of  the  Pope. 

But  no  surer  proof  of  the  increased  wisdom  of  man- 
kind can  be  given  than  the  termination  of  the  Crusades. 
Perhaps,  indeed,  it  was  found  that  religious  excitement 
could  be  combined  with  warlike  distinction  by  assaults 
on  the  unbelieving  or  disobedient  at  home.  There 
seemed  little  use  in  traversing  the  sea  and  toiling 
through  the  deserts  of  Syria,  when  the  same  heavenly 
rewards  were  held  out  for  a  campaign  against  the  in- 
habitants of  Languedoc  and  the  valleys  of  the  Alps. 
Clearer  views  also  of  the  political  effect  of  those  distant 
expeditions  in  strengthening  the  hands  of  the  Pope, 
who,  as  spiritual  head  of  Christftpdom,  was  ex  officio 
commander  of  the  crusading  armies,  must  no  doubt 
have  occurred  to  the  various  potentates  who  found 
themselves  compelled  to  aid  the  very  authority  from 
whose  arrogance  they  suffered  so  much.  The  exhaus- 
tion of  riches  and  decrease  of  population  were  equally 
strong  reasons  for  repose.  But  none  of  all  these  consi- 
derations had  the  least  effect  on  the  simple  and  credu- 
lous mind  of  Louis  the  Ninth.  Resisting  as  he  did  the 
interference  of  the  Pope  in  his  character  of  King  of 
France,  no  one  could  yield  more  devoted  submission  to 
the  commands  of  the  Holy  Father  when  uttered  to  him 
in  his  character  of  Christian  knight.  At  an  early  age 
he  vowed  himself  to  the  sacred  cause,  and  in  the  year 


END   OF  THE   CRUSADES.  817 

12i8  the  seventh  and  last  crusade  to  the  Holy  Land 
took  its  way  from  Aigues-Mortes  and  Marseilles,  under 
the  guidance  of  the  youthful  King  and  the  Princes  of 
France.  Disastrous  to  a  more  pitiful  degree  than  any 
of  its  predecessors,  this  expedition  began  its  course  in 
Egypt  by  the  conquest  of  Daraietta,  aijd  from  thence- 
forth sank  from  misery  to  misery,  till  the  army,  surprised 
by  the  inundations  of  the  Nile,  and  hemmed  in  by  the 
triumphant  Mussulmans,  surrendered  its  arms,  and  the 
nobility  of  France,  with  its  king  at  its  head,  found  itself 
the  prisoner  of  Almohadam.  An  insurrection  in  a  short 
time  deprived  their  conqueror  of  life  and  crown,  and  a 
treaty  for  the  payment  of  a  great  ransom  set  the  cai> 
tives  free.  Ashamed,  perhaps,  to  return  to  his  own 
country,  sighing  for  the  crown  of  martyrdom,  zealous  at 
all  events  for  the  privileges  of  a  pilgrim,  Louis  betook 
himself  to  Palestine,  and,  as  he  was  bound  by  the  con- 
vention not  to  attack  Jerusalem,  he  wasted  four  years 
in  uselessly  rebuilding  the  fortifications  of  Ptolemais, 
and  Sidon,  and  Jaffa,  and  only  embarked  on  his  home- 
ward voyage  when  the  death  of  his  mother  and  the  dis- 
content of  his  subjects  necessitated  his  return.  After  an 
absence  of  six  years,  the  enfeebled  and  exhausted  king 
sat  once  more  in  the  chair  of  judgment,  and 
gained  all  hearts  by  his  generosity  and  truth. 
Yet  the  old  fire  was  not  extinct.  His  oath  was  binding 
still,  and  in  1270,  girt  with  many  a  baron  bold,  and  ac- 
companied by  his  brother,  Charles  of  Anjou,  and  the 
gay  Prince  Edward  of  England,  he  fixed  the  red  cross 
upon  his  shoulder  and  led  his  army  to  the  sea-sliore 
The  ships  were  all  ready,  but  the  destination  of  the  wai 
was  changed.  A  new  power  had  established  itself  at 
Tunis,  more  hostile  to  Christianity  than  the  Moslem  of 
Egypt,  and  nearer  at  hand.  In  an  evil  hour  the  King 
was  persuaded  to   attack  the   Tunisian   Caliph.      He 


J18  THIRTEENTH   CENTURY. 

landed  at  Carthage,  and  besieged  the  capital  of  the  neiif 
dominion.  But  Tunis  witnessed  the  death  of  its  besieger, 
for  Louis,  worn  out  with  fatigue  and  broken  with  dis- 
appointment, was  stricken  by  a  contagious  malady,  and 
expired  with  the  courage  of  a  hero  and  the  pious  resig- 
nation of  a  Christian.  "With  him  the  crusading  spirit 
vanished  from  every  heart.  All  the  Christian  armies 
were  withdrawn.  The  Knights-Hospitallers,  the  Tem- 
plars, the  Teutonic  Order,  passed  over  to  Cyprus,  and 
left  the  hallowed  spots  of  sacred  story  to  be  profaned 
by  the  footsteps  of  the  Infidel.  Asia  and  Europe  hence- 
forth pursued  their  separate  courses ;  and  it  was  left  to 
the  present  day  to  startle  the  nations  of  both  quarters 
of  the  world  with  the  spectacle  of  a  war  about  the  pos- 
session of  the  Holy  Places. 

The  century  which  has  the  slaughter  of  the  Albi- 
genses,  the  Magna  Charta,  the  rise  of  the  Commons,  the 
termination  of  the  Crusades,  to  distinguish  it,  will  not 
need  other  features  to  be  pointed  out  in  order  to  abide 
in  our  memories.  Yet  the  reign  of  Edward  the  First, 
the  greatest  of  our  early  kings,  must  be  dwelt  on  a  little 
longer,  as  it  would  not  be  fair  to  omit  the  personal  merits 
of  a  man  who  united  the  virtues  of  a  legislator  to  those 
of  a  warrior.  Whether  it  was  the  prompting  of  ambi- 
tion, or  a  far-sighted  policy,  which  led  him  to  attempt 
the  conquest  of  Scotland,  we  need  not  stop  to  inquire 
It  might  have  satisfied  the  longings  both  of  policy  and 
ambition  if  he  had  succeeded  in  creating  a  compact  and 
irresistible  Great  Britain  out  of  England  harassed  and 
Scotland  insecure.  And  if,  contented  with  his  undi- 
vided kingdom,  he  had  devoted  himself  uninterruptedly 
to  the  introduction  and  consolidation  of  excellent  laws, 
and  had  extended  the  ameliorations  he  introduced  in 
England  to  the  northern  portion  of  his  dominions,  he 
would  have  earned  a  wider  fame  than  the  sw^d  has 


JOHN   BALIOL.  319 

given  liim,  and  would  have  been  received  with  blessings 
as  the  Justinian  of  the  whole  island,  instead  of  esta- 
blishing a  rankling  hatred  in  the  bosoms  of  one  of  the 
cognate  peoples  which  it  took  many  centuries  to  allay, 
if,  indeed,  it  is  altogether  obliterated  at  the  present 
time;  for  there  are  not  wanting  enthusiastic  Scotchmen 
who  show  considerable  wrath  when  treating  of  his  as- 
sumptions of  superiority  over  their  country  and  his  in- 
terference with  their  national  affairs. 

Edward's  sister  had  been  the  wife  of  Alexander  the 
Third  of  Scotland.  Two  sons  of  that  marriage  had 
died,  and  the  only  other  child,  a  daughter,  had  married 
Eric  the  Norwegian.  In  Margaret,  the  daughter  of 
this  king,  the  Scottish  succession  lay,  and  when  her 
grandfather  died  in  1290,  the  Scottish  states  sent  a 
squadron  to  bring  the  young  queen  home,  and  great 
preparations  were  made  for  the  reception  of  the  "  Maid 
of  Norway."  But  the  Maid  of  Norway  was  weak  in 
health;  the  voyage  was  tempestuous  and  long;  and 
weary  and  exhausted  she  landed  on  one  of  the  Orkney 
Islands,  and  in  a  short  time  a  rumour  went  round  the 
land  that  the  hope  of  Scotland  was  dead.  Edward  was 
among  the  first  to  learn  the  melancholy  news.  He  de- 
termined to  assert  his  rights,  and  began  by  trying  to 
extend  the  feudal  homage  which  several  of  the  Scottish 
kings  had  rendered  for  lands  held  in  England,  over  the 
Scottish  crown  itself.  When  the  various  competitors 
for  the  vacant  throne  submitted  their  pretensions  to  his 
decision  he  made  their  acknowledgment  of  his  supre- 
macy an  indispensable  condition.  Out  of  the  three  chief 
candidates  he  fixed  on  John  Baliol,  who,  in  addition  to 
the  most  legal  title,  had  perhaps  the  equal  recommenda- 
tion of  being  the  feeblest  personal  character.  Eobert 
Brace  and  Hastings,  the  other  candidates,  submitted  to 
their  disappointment,  and  Baliol  became  the  mere  vice* 


*20  THIRTEENTH   CENTURY. 

toy  of  the  English  king.     He  obeyed  a  summons  to  West 

minster  as  a  vassal  of  Edward,  to  answer  for  his  conduct, 

,„„.,  and  was  treated  with  disdain.     But  the  Scottish 

A.D.  1293. 

barons  had  more  spirit  than  their  king.     They 

forced  him  to  resist  the  pretensions  of  his  overbearing 
patron,  and  for  the  first  time,  in  1295,  began  the  long 
connection  between  Franch  and  Scotland  by  a  treaty 
concluded  between  the  French  monarch  and  the  twelve 
Guardians  of  Scotland,  to  whom  Baliol  had  delegated 
his  authority  before  retiring  forever  to  more  peaceful 
scenes.  From  this  time  we  find  that,  whenever  war  was 
declared  by  France  on  England,  Scotland  was  let  loose 
on  it  to  distract  its  attention,  in  the  same  way  as,  when- 
ever war  was  declared  upon  France,  the  hostility  of 
Flanders  was  roused  against  its  neighbour.  But  the 
benefits  bestowed  by  England  on  her  Low  Country  ally 
were  far  greater  than  any  advantage  which  France 
could  ofi'er  to  Scotland.  Facilities  of  trade  and  favour- 
able tariffs  bound  the  men  of  Ghent  and  Bruges  to  the 
interests  of  Edward.  But  the  friendship  of  France  was 
limited  to  a  few  bribes  and  the  loan  of  a  few  soldiers. 
Scotland,  therefore,  became  impoverished  by  her  alliance, 
while  Flanders  grew  fat  on  the  liberality  of  her  power- 
ful friend.  England  itself  derived  no  small  benefit  botl 
from  the  hostility  of  Scotland  and  the  alliance  of  the 
Flemings.  When  the  IN'orthern  army  was  strong,  and 
the  King  was  hard  pressed  by  the  great  Wallace,  the 
sagacious  Parliament  exacted  concessions  and  immuni- 
ties from  its  imperious  lord  before  it  came  liberally  to 
his  aid ;  and  whenever  we  read  in  one  page  of  a  check 
to  the  arms  of  Edward,  we  read  in  the  next  of  an  en- 
largement of  the  popular  rights.  When  the  first  glow 
of  the  apparent  conquest  of  Scotland  was  past,  and  the 
nation  was  seen  rising  under  the  Knight  of  Elderslie ' 
after  it  had  been  deserted  by  its  natural  leaders,  the 


KINGLY   CONCESSIONS   TO   PARLIAMENT.  321 

lords  and  barons, — and,  later,  when  in  1297  he  gained 
a  great  victory  over  the  English  at  Stirling, — the 
Enghsh  Parliament  lost  no  time  in  availing  themselves 
of  the  defeat,  and  sent  over  to  the  king,  who  was  at  the 
moment  in  Flanders  menacing  the  flanks  of  France,  a 
parchment  for  his  signature,  containing  the  most  ample 
ratification  of  their  power  of  granting  or  withholding 
the  supplies.  It  was  on  the  10th  of  October,  1297,  that 
this  important  document  was  signed ;  and,  satisfied  with 
this  assurance  of  their  privileges,  the  "nobles,  knights 
of  the  shire,  and  burgesses  of  England  in  parliament  as- 
sembled" voted  the  necessary  funds  to  enable  their  sove- 
reign lord  to  punish  his  rebels  in  Scotland.  Perhaps 
these  contests  between  the  sister  countries  deepened  the 
patriotic  feeling  of  each,  and  prepared  them,  at  a  later 
day,  to  throw  their  separate  and  even  hostile  triumphs 
into  the  united  stock,  so  that,  as  Charles  Knight  says 
in  his  admirable  "  Popular  History,"  "  the  Englishman 
who  now  reads  of  the  deeds  of  Wallace  and  Bruce,  or 
hears  the  stirring  words  of  one  of  the  noblest  lyrics  of 
any  tongue,  feels  that  the  call  to  ^ay  the  proud  usurper 
low'  is  one  which  stirs  his  blood  as  much  as  that  of  the 
born  Scotsman;  for  the  small  distinctions  of  locality 
have  vanished,  and  the  great  universal  sympathies  for 
the  brave  and  the  oppressed  stay  not  to  ask  whether 
the  battle  for  freedom  was  fought  on  the  banks  of  the 
Thames  or  of  the  Forth.  The  mightiest  schemes  of 
despotism  speedily  perish.  The  union  of  nations  is  ac- 
oomplished  only  by  a  slow  but  secure  establishment  of 
mutual  interests  and  equal  rights." 


FOURTEENTH  CENTURY. 


iSmperors  of  (^ennang.      lEmperors  of  tje  iHagt. 


Albert. — [cont.) 

1308.  Henry  VII.,  (of  Luxem- 
burg.) 

1314.  Louis  IV.,  (of  \ 

Bavaria.)         /  Rival 

1314.  Frederick  III.,/  Empe- 
(of  Austria,)  \  rors. 
died  1330.       / 

1347.  Charles  IV.,  (of  Luxem- 
burg.) 

1378.  Wenceslas,  (of  Bohe- 
mia.) 

ItinflS  ot  jFtmtt. 

Philip  TV.— {cont.) 
1314.  Louis  X.,  (Hutin.) 
131G.  Philip  V.,  (the  Long.) 
13^2.  Charles  IV.,  (the  Hand- 
some.) 
1328.  Philip  VI. 
1350.  John  II.,  (the  Good.) 
1364.  Charles  V.,  (the  Wise.) 
1380.  Charles  VI.,  (the  Be- 
loved.) 


Andronicus  II. — {cont.) 
1332.  Andronicus  III. 
1341.  John  Pal^eologus. 
1347.  John  Camtacuzenus. 
1355.  John    Pal^ologus,     (re 

stored.) 
1391.  Manuel  Pal^sologus 


icings  of  iSnfilant(» 

Edward  I. — •{cont.) 
1307.  Edward  II. 
1327.  Edward  IIL 
1377.  Richard  II. 
1399L  Henry  IV. 


itinfls;  of  ScotlanlJ. 

1306.  Robert  Bruce 
1329.  David  II. 
1371.  Robert  II. 
1390.  Robert  III. 


1311.  Suppression  of  the  Knights  Templars. 

1343.  Cannon  first  used. 

1370.  John  Huss  born. 

1383.  Bible  first  translated  into  a  vulgar  tongue,  (Wickliff's.) 

:auti)or3. 

Dante,  Petrarch,  Boccaccio,  Chaucer,  Froissart,  John  Dons 
SooTUS,  Bradwardine,  "William  Occam,  Wickliff 


THE  FOUETEENTH  CENTUEY. 

ABOLITION    OF    THE    ORDER    OP    THE    TEMPLARS — RISE    08 
MODERN   LITERATURES — SCHISM   OF   THE   CHURCH 

In  the  year  1300  a  jubilee  was  celebrated  at  Rome, 
when  remission  of  sins  and  other  spiritual  indulgences 
were  offered  to  all  visitors  by  the  liberal  hand  of  Pope 
Boniface  the  Eighth.  And  for  the  thirty  days  of  the 
solemn  ceremonial,  the  crowds  who  poured  in  from  all 
parts  of  Europe,  and  pursued  their  way  from  church  to 
church  and  kissed  with  reverential  lips  the  relics  of  the 
saints  and  martyrs,  gave  an  appearance  of  strength  and 
universality  to  the  Eoman  Church  which  had  long  de- 
parted from  it.  Yet  the  downward  course  had  been  so 
slow,  and  each  defection  or  defeat  had  been  so  covered 
from  observation  in  a  cloud  of  magnificent  boasts,  that 
the  real  weakness  of  the  Papacy  was  only  known 
to  the  wise  and  politic.  Even  in  the  splendours  and 
apparent  triumph  of  the  jubilee  processions  it  was  per- 
ceived by  the  eyes  of  hostile  statesmen  that  the  day  of 
faith  was  past. 

Bante,  the  great  poet  of  Italy,  was  there,  piercing 
with  his  Ithuriel  spear  the  false  forms  under  which  the 
spiritual  tyranny  concealed  itself.  Countless  multitudes 
deployed  before  him  without  blinding  him  for  a  moment 
to  the  unreality  of  all  he  saw.  Others  were  there,  not 
deriving  their  conclusions,  like  Dante,  from  the  intuitive 
insight  into  truth  with  which  the  highest*  imaginations 
are  gifted,  but  from  the  calmer  premises  of  reason  and 
observation.     Even  while  the  pagans  were  loudest  and 

326 


826 


FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 


the  triumph  at  its  height,  thoughts  were  entering  into 
many  hearts  which  had  never  been  harboured  before, 
but  which  in  no  long  space  bore  their  fruits,  not  only  in 
opposition  to  the  actual  proceedings  of  Eome,  but  in 
undisguised  contempt  and  ridicule  of  all  its  claims. 
Boniface  himself,  however,  was  ignorant  of  all  these 
secret  feelings.  He  was  now  past  eighty  years  of  age, 
and  burning  with  a  wilder  personal  ambition  and  more 
presumptuous  ostentation  than  would  have  been  pardon- 
able at  twenty.  He  appeared  in  the  processions  of  the 
jubilee,  dressed  in  the  robes  of  the  Empire,  with  two 
swords,  and  the  globe  of  sovereignty  carried  before  him. 
A  herald  cried,  at  the  same  time,  "Peter,  behold  thy 
successor !  Christ,  behold  thy  vicar  upon  earth  I"  But 
the  high  looks  of  the  proud  were  soon  to  be  brought 
low.  The  King  of  France  at  that  time  was  Philip  the 
Handsome,  the  most  unprincipled  and  pbstinate  of  men, 
who  stuck  at  no  baseness  or  atrocity  to  gain  his  ends, — 
who  debased  the  Crown,  pillaged  the  Church,  oppressed 
the  people,  tortured  the  Jews,  and  impoverished  the  no- 
bility,— a  self-willed,  strong-handed,  evil-hearted  despot, 
and  glowing  with  an  intense  desire  to  humble  and  spoil 
the  Holy  Father  himself.  If  he  could  get  the  Pope  to  be 
his  tax-gatherer,  and,  instead  of  emptying  the  land  of 
all  its  wealth  for  the  benefit  of  the  Eoman  exchequer, 
pour  Eoman,  German,  English,  European  contributions 
into  his  private  treasury,  the  object  of  his  life  would  be 
gained.  His  coffers  would  be  overflowing,  and  his  prin- 
cipal opponent  disgraced.  A  wonderful  and  apparently 
impossible  scheme,  but  which  nevertheless  succeeded. 
The  combatants  at  first  seemed  very  equally  matched. 
When  Boniface  made  an  extravagant  demand,  Philip 
sent  him  a  contemptuous  reply.  When  Boniface  turned 
for  alliances  to  the  Emperor  or  to  England,  Philip  threw 
himself  on  the  sympathy  of  his  lords  and  the  inhabit 


BONIFACE.  327 

ants  of  the  towns;  for  the  parts  formerly  played  by 
Pope  and  King  were  now  reversed.  The  Papacy,  instead 
of  recurring  to  the  people  and  strengthening  itself  by 
contact  with  the  masses  who  had  looked  to  the  Church 
as  their  natural  guard  from  the  aggressions  of  their 
lords,  now  had  recourse  to  the  more  dangerous  expedient 
of  exciting  one  sovereign  against  another,  and  weak- 
ened its  power  as  much  by  concessions  to  its  friends  as 
by  the  hostility  of  its  foes.  The  king,  on  the  other  hand, 
flung  himself  on  the  support  of  his  subjects,  including 
both  the  Church  and  Parliament,  and  thus  raised  a  feel- 
ing of  national  independence  which  was  more  fatal  to 
Roman  preponderance  than  the  most  active  personal 
enmity  could  have  been.  Accordingly,  wo  find  Boniface 
offending  the  population  of  France  by  his  intemperate 
attacks  on  the  worst  of  kings,  and  that  worst  of  kings 
attracting  the  admiration  of  his  people  by  standing  up 
for  the  dignity  of  the  Crown  against  the  presumption 
of  the  Pope.  The  fact  of  this  national  spirit  is  shown 
by  the  very  curious  circumstance  that  while  Philip  and 
bis  advisers,  in  their  quarrels  with  Boniface,  kept  within 
the  bounds  of  respectful  language  in  the  letters  they 
actually  sent  to  Eome,  other  answers  were  disseminated 
among  the  people  as  having  been  forwarded  to  the 
Pope,  outraging  all  the  feelings  of  courtesy  and  respect. 
It  was  like  the  conduct  of  the  Chinese  mandarins,  who 
publish  vainglorious  and  triumphant  bulletins  among 
their  people,  while  they  write  in  very  different  language 
to  the  enemy  at  their  gates.  Thus,  in  reply  to  a  very 
insulting  brief  of  Boniface,  beginning,  "  Ausculta,  fili," 
(Listen,  son,)  and  containing  a  catalogue  of  all  his  com- 
plaints against  the  French  king,  Philip  published  a 
version  of  it,  omitting  all  the  verbiage  in  which  the 
insolent  meaning  was  involved,  and  accompanied  it  in 
the  same  way  with  a  copy  of  the  unadorned  eloquenco 


»28  FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 

which  constituted  his  reply.  In  this  he  descended  to 
very  plain  speaking.  "  Philip/'  he  says,  "  by  the  grace 
of  God,  King  of  the  French,  to  Boniface,  calling  himself 
Pope,  little  or  no  salutation.  Be  it  known  to  your 
Fatuity  that  we  are  subject  in  temporals  to  no  mar 
alive;  that  the  collation  of  churches  and  vacant  pre- 
bends is  inherent  in  our  Crown ;  that  their  ^  fruits'  be- 
long to  us ;  that  all  presentations  made  or  to  be  made 
by  us  are  valid;  that  we  will  maintain  our  presentees  in 
possession  of  them  with  all  our  power;  and  that  we 
hold  for  fools  and  idiots  whosoever  believes  otherwise." 
This  strange  address  received  the  support  of  the  great 
majority  of  the  nation,  and  was  meant  as  a  translation 
into  the  vulgar  tongue  of  the  real  intentions  of  the  irri- 
tated monarch,  which  w^ere  concealed  in  the  letter  really 
despatched  in  a  mist  of  polite  circumlocutions.  Boni- 
face perceived  the  animus  of  his  foe,  but  bore  himself  as 
loftily  as  ever.  When  a  meeting  of  the  barons,  held  in 
the  Louvre,  had  appealed  to  a  General  Council  and  had 
passed  a  vote  of  condemnation  against  the  Pope  as 
guilty  of  many  crimes,  not  exclusive  of  heresy  itself, 
he  answered,  haughtily,  that  the  summoning  of  a  council 
was  a  prerogative  of  the  Pope,  and  that  already  the 
King  had  incurred  the  danger  of  excommunication  for 
the  steps  he  had  taken  against  the  Holy  Chair.  To 
prevent  the  publication  of  the  sentence,  which  might 
have  been  made  a  powerful  weapon  against  France  in 
the  hands  of  Albert  of  Germany  or  Edward  of  England, 
it  was  necessary  to  give  notice  of  an  appeal  to  a 
General  Council  into  the  hands  of  the  Pope  in  person. 
fle  had  retired  to  Anagni,  his  native  town,  where  he 
found  himself  more  secure  among  his  friends  and  rela- 
tions than  in  the  capital  of  his  See.  Colonna,  a  discon- 
'vcnted  Koman  and  sworn  enemy  of  Boniface,  and 
Supino,  a   mili<-a.ry   adventurer,   whom    Philip    bought 


ARREST  OF   THE   POPE. 


329 


over  with  a  bribe  of  ten  thousand  florins,  introduced 
Nogaret,  the  French  chancellor  and  chief  adviser  of  the 
king,  into  Anagni,  with  cries  from  their  armed  attend- 
ants of  "  Death  to  the  Pope !"  "  Long  live  the  King 
of  France  I"  The  cardinals  fled  in  dismay.  The  inhabit- 
ants, not  being  able  to  prevent  their  visitors  from  piL 
laging  the  shops,  joined  them  in  that  occupation,  and 
every  thing  was  in  confusion.  The  Pope  was  in  despair. 
His  own  nephew  had  abandoned  his  cause  and  made 
terms  for  himself.  Accounts  vary  as  to  his  behaviour 
in  these  extremities.  Perhaps  they  are  all  true  at  dif- 
ferent periods  of  the  scene.  At  first,  overwhelmed  with 
the  treachery  of  his  friends,  he  is  said  to  have  burst 
into  tears.  Then  he  gathered  his  ancient  courage,  and, 
when  commanded  to  abdicate,  offered  his  neck  to  the 
assailants ;  and  at  last,  to  strike  them  with  awe,  or  at 
least  to  die  with  dignity,  he  bore  on  his  shoulders  the 
mantle  of  St.  Peter,  placed  the  crown  of  Constantino  on 
his  head,  and  grasped  the  keys  and  cross  in  his  hands. 
Colonna,  they  say,  struck  him  on  the  cheek  with  his 
iron  gauntlet  till  the  blood  came.  Let  us  hope  that  this 
is  an  invention  of  the  enemy;  for  the  Pope  was  eighty- 
six  years  old,  and  Colonna  was  a  Eoman  soldier.  There 
is  always  a  tendency  to  elevate  the  suflerer  in  the  cause 
we  favour,  by  the  introduction  of  ennobling  circum- 
stances. In  this  and  other  instances  of  the  same  kind 
there  is  the  further  temptation  in  orthodox  historians  to 
make  the  most  they  can  of  the  martyrdom  of  one  of 
their  chiefs,  and  in  a  peculiar  manner  to  glorify  the 
wrongs  of  their  hero  by  their  resemblance  to  the  suf- 
ferings  of  Christ.  But  the  rest  of  the  story  is  melan- 
choly enough  without  the  aggravation  of  personal  pain. 
The  pontiff  abstained  from  food  for  three  whole  days. 
He  consumed  his  grief  in  secret,  and  was  only  relieved 
at  last  from  fears  of  the  dagger  or  poison  by  an  insur« 


530  FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 

rcction  of  the  people.  They  fell  upon  the  French  escort 
when  they  perceived  how  weak  it  was,  and  carried  the 
Pope  into  the  market-place.  He  said,  "  Grood  people, 
you  have  seen  how  our  enemies  have  spoiled  me  of  my 
goods.  Behold  me  as  poor  as  Job.  I  tell  you  truly,  I  have 
nothing  to  eat  or  drink.  If  there  is  any  good  woman 
who  will  charitably  bestow  on  me  a  little  bread  and 
wine,  or  even  a  little  water,  I  will  give  her  God's  bless- 
ing and  mine.  Whoever  will  bring  me  the  smallest 
thing  in  this  my  necessity,  I  will  give  him  remission  of 
all  his  sins."  All  the  people  cried,  "  Long  live  the  Holy 
Father  I"  They  ran  and  brought  him  bread  and  wine, 
and  any  thing  they  had.  Everybody  would  enter  and 
speak  to  him,  just  as  to  any  other  of  the  poor.  In  a 
short  time  after  this  he  proceeded  to  Eome,  and  felt 
once  more  in  safety.  But  his  heart  was  tortured  by 
anger  and  a  thirst  for  vengeance.  He  became  insane ; 
and  whcu.  he  tried  to  escape  from  the  restraints  his  state 
demanded,  and  found  his  way  barred  by  the  Orsini,  his 
insanity  became  madness.  He  foamed  at  the  mouth  and 
ground  his  teeth  when  he  was  spoken  to.  He  repelled 
the  offers  of  his  friends  with  curses  and  violence,  and 
died  without  the  sacraments  or  consolations  of  the 
Church.  The  people  remembered  the  prophecy 
made  of  him  by  his  predecessor  Celestin : — "You 
mounted  like  a  fox ;  you  will  reign  like  a  lion ;  you  will 
die  like  a  dog." 

But  the  degradation  of  the  papal  chair  was  not  yet 
complete,  and  Philij>  was  far  from  satisfied.  Merely  to 
have  harassed  to  death  an  old  man  of  eighty-six  was  not 
sufficient  for  a  monarch  who  wanted  a  servant  in  the 
i?ope  more  than  a  victim.  To  try  his  power  over  Bene- 
dict the  Eleventh,  the  successor  of  Boniface,  he  began  a 
process  in  the  Eoman  court  against  the  memory  of  his 
late  antagonist.     Benedict  replied  by  an  anathema  in 


PHILIP'S   BARGAIN.  331 

general  terms  on  the  murderers  of  Boniface,  i^nd  all 
Philip's  crimes  and  schemings  seemed  of  no  avail.  But 
one  day  the  sister  of  a  religious  order  presented  His 
HoUness  with  a  basket  of  figs,  and  in  a  short  time  the 
pontifical  throne  was  vacant. 

Kow  was  the  time  for  the  triumph  of  the  king.  Ho 
had  devoted  much  time  and  money  to  win  over  a  num- 
ber of  cardinals  to  his  cause,  and  obtained  a  promise 
under  their  hands  and  seals  that  they  would  vote  for 
whatever  candidate  he  chose  to  name.  He  was  not  long 
in  fixing  on  a  certain  Bernard  de  Goth,  Archbishop  of 
Bordeaux,  the  most  greedy  and  unprincipled  of  the  pre- 
lates of  France,  and  appointed  a  meeting  with  him  to 
settle  the  terms  of  a  bargain.  They  met  in  a  forest 
they  heard  mass  together,  and  took  mutual  oaths  of  se- 
crecy, and  then  the  business  began.  "  See,  archbishop," 
said  the  king:  "I  have  it  in  my  power  to  make  you 
Pope  if  I  choose;  and  if  you  promise  me  six  favours 
which  I  will  ask  of  you,  I  will  assure  you  that  dignity, 
and  give  you  evidence  of  the  truth  of  what  I  say."  So 
saying,  he  showed  the  letters  and  delegation  of  both  the 
electoral  colleges.  The  archbishop,  filled  with  covetous- 
ness,  and  seeing  at  once  how  entirely  the  popedom  de- 
pended on  the  king,  threw  himself  trembling  with  joy 
at  Philip's  feet.  "  My  lord,"  he  said,  "  I  now  perceive 
you  love  me  more  than  any  man  alive,  and  that  you 
render  me  good  for  evil.  It  is  for  you  to  command, — 
for  me  to  obey;  and  I  shall  always  be  ready  to  do  so." 
The  king  lifted  him  up,  kissed  him  on  the  mouth,  and 
said  to  him,  "The  six  special  favours  I  have  to  ask  of 
you  are  these.  First,  that  you  will  reconcile  me  entirely 
with  the  Church,  and  get  me  pardoned  for  my  misdeed 
in  arresting  Pope  Boniface.  Second,  that  you  will  give 
the  communion  to  me  and  all  my  supporters.  Thi:*d, 
\hat  you  will  ^ive  me  tithes  of  the  clergy  of  my  realm 


532 


FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 


for  five  years,  to  supply  the  expenses  of  the  war  in 
Flanders.  Fourth,  that  you  will  destroy  and  annul  the 
memory  of  Boniface  the  Eighth.  Fifth,  that  you  will 
give  the  dignity  of  Cardinal  to  Messer  Jacopo,  and 
Messer  Piero  de  la  Colonna,  along  with  certain  others 
of  my  friends.  As  for  the  sixth  favour  and  promise,  I 
reserve  it  for  the  proper  time  and  place,  for  it  is  a  great 
and  secret  thing."  The  archbishop  promised  all  by  oath 
on  the  Corpus  Domini,  and  gave  his  brother  and  two 
nephews  as  hostages.  The  king,  on  the  other  hand, 
made  oath  to  have  him  elected  Pope. 
His  Holiness  Clement  the  Fifth  was  therefore  the 
,^-.  thrall  and  servant  of  Philip  le  Bel.     'No  oflSco 

A.D.  130o.  ■'• 

was  too  lowly,  or  sacrifice  too  large,  for  the 
grateful  pontiff.  He  carried  his  subserviency  so  far  as 
to  cross  the  Alps  and  receive  the  wages  of  his  obedience, 
the  papal  tiara,  at  Lyons.  He  became  in  fact  a  citizen 
of  France,  and  subject  of  the  crown.  He  delivered  over 
the  clergy  to  the  relentless  hands  of  the  king.  He  gave 
him  tithes  of  all  their  livings ;  and  as  the  Count  of 
Flanders  owed  money  to  Philip  which  he  had  no 
means  of  paying,  the  generosity  of  the  Pope  came  to 
the  rescue,  and  he  gave  the  tithes  of  the  Flemish  clergy 
to  the  bankrupt  count  in  order  to  enable  him  to  pay  his 
debt  to  the  exacting  monarch.  But  the  gift  of  these 
taxes  was  not  a  transfer  from  the  Pope  to  the  king  or 
count :  His  Holiness  did  not  reduce  his  own  demands  in 
consideration  of  the  subsidies  given  to  those  powers. 
He  completed,  indeed,  the  ruin  the  royal  tax-gatherers 
began ;  for  he  travelled  in  more  than  imperial  state  from 
end  to  end  of  France,  and  ate  bishop  and  abbot,  and 
prior  and  prebendary,  out  of  house  and  home.  "VYhei 
ever  he  rested  for  a  night  or  two,  the  land  became  im- 
poverished ;  and  all  this  wealth  was  poured  into  the  lap 
of  a  certain   Brunissende  de  Perigord,  who   cost  the 


EXTINCTION   OF   KNIGHTHOOD. 


88S 


Church,  it  was  popularly  said,  more  than  the  Holy 
Land.  But  the  capacity  of  Christian  contribution  was 
soon  exhausted;  and  yet  the  interminable  avarice  of 
Pope  and  King  went  on.  The  honourable  pair  hit  upon 
an  excellent  expedient,  and  the  Jews  were  offered  as  a 
fresh  pasture  for  the  unimpaired  appetite  of  the  Father 
of  Christendom  and  the  eldest  son  of  the  Church. 
Philip  hated  their  religion,  but  seems  to  have  had  a 
great  respect  for  the  accuracy  of  their  proceedings  in 
trade.  So,  to  gratify  the  first,  ho  stripped  them  of  all 
they  had,  and,  to  prove  the  second,  confiscated  the  money 
he  found  entered  in  their  books  as  lent  on  interest  to 
Christians.  He  was  found  to  be  a  far  more  difficult 
creditor  to  deal  with  than  the  original  lenders  had  been, 
and  many  a  baron  and  needy  knight  had  to  refund  to 
Philip  the  sums,  with  interest  at  twenty  per  cent., 
which  they  might  have  held  indefinitely  from  the  sons 
of  Abraham  and  repudiated  in  an  access  of  religious 
fervour  at  last. 

But  worse  calamities  were  hanging  over  the  heads  of 
knights  and  barons  than  the  avarice  of  Philip  and  the 
dishonesty  of  Clement.  Knighthood  itself,  and  feudal- 
ism, were  about  to  die, — knighthood,  which  had  offered 
at  all  events  an  ideal  of  nobleness  and  virtue,  and  feudal- 
ism, which  had  replaced  the  expiring  civilization  of 
Rome  founded  on  the  centralization  of  power  in  ono 
man's  hands,  and  the  degradation  of  all  the  rest,  with  a 
new  form  of  society  which  derived  its  vitality  from  in- 
dependent action  and  individual  self-respect.  It  was  by 
a  still  wider  expansion  of  power  and  influence  that  feu- 
dalism was  to  be  superseded.  Other  elements  besides 
the  possession  of  land  were  to  come  into  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  new  state  of  human  affairs.  The  man  hence- 
forth was  not  to  be  the  mere  representative  of  so  many 
acres   of   ground.     His  individuality   was   to   bo    stiU 


S34 


FOURTEENTH    CENTURY. 


further  defined,  and  learning,  wealth,  knowledge,  arts, 
and  sciences  were  from  this  time  forth  to  have  as  much 
weight  in  the  commonwealth  as  the  hoisted  pennon  and 
strong-armed  followers  of  the  steel-clad  warrior. 

"  The  old  order  shangeth,  giving  place  to  new, 
Lest  one  good  cu£«om  should  corrupt  the  world." 

We  have  already  seen  the  prosperity  of  the  towns, 
and  have  even  heard  the  contemptuous  laughter  with 
which  the  high-fed  burghers  of  Ghent  or  Bruges  received 
the  caracoUings  of  their  ponderous  suzerain  as,  armed 
cap-d-pied,  he  rode  up  to  their  impregnable  walls.  Not 
less  barricaded  than  the  contemptuous  city  behind  the 
steel  fortifications  with  which  he  protected  his  person, 
the  knight  had  nothing  to  fear  so  long  as  he  bestrode 
his  war-horse  and  managed  to  get  breath  enough 
through  the  openings  of  his  cross-barred  visor.  He 
was  as  safe  in  his  iron  coating  as  a  turtle  in  its  shell; 
but  he  was  nearly  as  unwieldy  as  he  was  safe.  When 
galloping  forward  against  a  line  of  infantry,  nothing 
could  resist  his  weight.  With  heavy  mace  or  sweeping 
sword  he  cleared  his  ground  on  either  side,  and  the  un- 
armoured  adversary  had  no  means  of  repelling  his 
assault.  A  hundred  knights,  therefore,  we  may  readily 
believe,  very  often  have  put  their  thousands  or  tens 
of  thousands  to  flight.  We  read,  indeed,  of  immense 
slaughters  of  the  common  people,  accompanied  with  the 
loss  of  one  single  knight ;  and  this  must  be  attributed  to 
the  perfection  which  the  armourer's  art  had  attained,  by 
which  no  opening  for  arrow  or  spear-point  was  left  in 
the  whole  suit.  But  military  instruments  had  for  some 
time  been  invented,  which,  by  projecting  large  stones 
with  enormous  force,  flattened  the  solid  cuirass  or 
crushed  the  glittering  helm.  Once  get  the  stunned  or 
wounded  warrior  on  the  ground,  there  was  no  further 
danger  to  be  apprehended.    He  lay  in  his  iron  prison 


COURTRAI.  »36 

unable  to  get  up,  unable  to  breathe,  and  with  the  ad- 
ditional misfortune  of  being  so  admirably  protected  that 
his  enemies  had  difficulty  in  putting  him  out  of  his  pain. 
This,  however,  was  counterbalanced  by  the  ample  time 
he  possessed,  during  their  futile  efforts  to  reach  a  vital 
part,  to  bargain  for  his  life;  and  this  was  another 
element  in  the  safety  of  knightly  war.  A  ransom 
could  at  all  times  preserve  his  throat,  whereas  the  dis- 
abled foot-soldier  was  pierced  with  relentless  point  or 
trodden  down  by  the  infuriated  horse.  The  knight's 
position,  therefore,  was  more  like  that  of  a  fighter 
behind  walls,  only  that  he  carried  his  wall  with  him 
wherever  he  went,  and  even  when  a  breach  was  made 
could  stop  up  the  gap  with  a  sum  of  money.  Nobody 
had  ever  believed  it  possible  for  footmen  to  stand  up 
against  a  charge  of  cavalry.  No  manoeuvres  were 
learned  like  the  hollow  squares  of  modern  times,  which, 
at  Waterloo  and  elsewhere,  have  stood  unmoved  against 
the  best  swordsmen  of  the  world.  But  once,  at  the 
beginning  of  this  century,  in  1302,  a  dreadful  event 
happened,  which  gave  a  different  view  of  the  capabili- 
ties of  determined  infantry  in  making  head  against 
their  assailants,  and  commenced  the  lesson  of  the  re- 
sistibility  of  mounted  warriors  which  was  completed 
by  Bannockburn  in  Scotland,  and  Crecy  and  Poictiers. 

The  dreadful  event  was  the  entire  overthrow  of  the 
knights  and  gentlemen  of  France  by  the  citizens  of  a 
Flemish  manufacturing  town  at  the  battle  of  Courtrai. 
Impetuous  valour,  and  contempt  for  smiths  and  weavers, 
blinded  the  fiery  nobles.  They  rushed  forward  with 
loose  bridles,  and,'  as  they  had  disdained  to  reconnoitre 
the  scene  of  the  display,  they  fell  headlong,  one  after 
another,  horse  and  plume,  sword  and  spur,  into  ono 
enormous  ditch  which  lay  between  them  and  their 
enemies.     On   they  came,  an   avalanche  of  steel   and 


e36 


FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 


horseflosli,  and  floundered  into  the  muddy  hole.  Hun- 
dreds, thousands,  unable  to  check  their  steeds,  or  afraid 
to  appear  irresolute,  or  goggling  in  vain  through  the 
deep  holes  left  for  their  eyes,  fell,  struggled,  writhed, 
and  choked,  till  the  ditch  was  filled  with  trampled 
knights  and  tumbling  horses,  and  the  burghers  on  the 
opposite  bank  beat  in  the  helmets  of  those  who  tried  to 
climb  up,  with  jagged  clubs,  and  hacked  their  naked 
heads.  And  when  the  whole  army  was  annihilated,  and 
the  spoils  were  gathered,  it  was  found  there  were  princes 
and  lords  in  almost  incredible  numbers,  and  four  thou- 
sand golden  spurs  to  mark  the  extent  of  the  knightly 
slaughter  and  give  name  to  the  engagement.  It  is 
called  the  Battle  of  the  Spurs, — for  a  nobler  cause  than 
another  engagement  of  the  same  name,  which  we  shall 
meet  with  in  a  future  century,  and  which  derived  its 
appellation  from  the  fact  that  spurs  were  more  in  re- 
quisition than  swords. 

Philip  was  at  this  moment  in  the  middle  of  his  quarrel 
with  Boniface.  He  determined  to  compensate  himself 
for  the  loss  he  had  sustained  in  military  fame  at  Cour- 
trai  by  fiercer  exactions  on  his  clergy  and  bitterer 
enmity  to  the  Pope.  We  have  seen  how  he  pursued 
the  wretched  Boniface  to  the  grave,  and  persisted  in 
trying  to  force  the  obsequious  Clement  to  blacken  his 
memory  after  he  was  dead.  Clement  was  unwilling  to 
expose  the  vices  and  crimes  of  his  predecessor,  and  ye< 
he  had  given  a  promise  in  that  strange  meeting  in  the 
forest  to  work  his  master's  will ;  he  was  also  resident  in 
France,  and  knew  how  unscrupulous  his  protector  was. 
Philip  availed  himself  of  the  discredit  brought  on 
knighthood  by  the  loss  of  all  those  golden  spurs,  and 
compounded  for  leaving  the  deceased  pontiff  alone,  by 
exacting  the  consent  of  Clement  to  his  assault  on  the 
order  of  the  Templars,  the  wealthiest  institution  in  the 


THE   TEMPLAllH  337 

world,  who  held  thousands  of  the  best  manors  iii  Franc  , 
and  whoso  spoils  would  make  him  the  richest  king  in 
Christendom.  Yet  the  Templars  were  no  contemptible 
foes.  In  number  they  were  but  fourteen  thousand,  but 
their  castles  were  over  all  the  land;  they  were  every 
one  of  them  of  noble  blood,  and  strong  in  the  relation- 
ship of  all  the  great  houses  in  Europe.  If  they  had 
united  with  their  brethren,  the  Knights  Hospitallers,  no 
sovereign  could  have  resisted  their  demands;  but,  for- 
tunately for  Philip,  they  were  rivals  to  the  death,  and 
gave  no  assistance  to  each  other  when  oj^pressed.  Both, 
in  fact,  had  outlived  the  causes  of  their  institution,  and 
had  forfeited  the  respect  of  the  masses  of  the  people  by 
their  ostentatious  abnegation  of  all  the  rules  by  which 
they  professed  to  be  bound.  Poverty,  chastity,  and 
brotherly  kindness  were  the  sworn  duties  of  the  most 
rich,  sensual,  and  unpitying  society  which  ever  lived 
When  Eichard  of  England  was  dying,  he  made  an 
imaginary  will,  and  said,  "1  leave  my  avarice  to  the 
Citeaux,  my  luxury  to  the  Gre^  Friars,  and  my  pride  to 
the  Templars."  And  the  Templars  took  possession  of 
the  bequest.  When  driven  from  the  Holy  Land,  they 
settled  in  all  the  Christian  kingdoms  from  Denmark  to 
the  south  of  Italy,  and  everywhere  presented  the  same 
spectacle  of  selfishness  and  debauchery.  In  Paris  they 
had  got  possession  of  a  tract  of  ground  equal  to  one- 
third  of  the  whole  city,  and  had  covered  it  with  towers 
and  battlements,  and  within  the  unapproachable  fortress 
lived  a  life  of  the  most  luxurious  self-indulgence.  Strange 
rumours  got  abroad  of  the  unholy  rites  with  which  their 
ioitiations  were  accompanied.  Their  receptions  into  the 
order  were  so  mysterious  and  sacred  that  an  interloper 
(if  it  had  been  the  King  of  France)  would  have  been  put 
to  death  for  his  intrusion.  Frightful  stories  were  told 
jf  their  blasphemies  and  hideous  ceremonials.  Reports 
15 


<88 


FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 


came  even  from  over  the  sea,  that  while  in  Jerusalem 
they  had  conformed  to  the  Mohammedan  faith  and  had 
exchanged  visits  and  friendly  offices  with  the  chiefs  of 
the  unbelievers.  Against  so  dark  and  haughty  an  asso- 
ciation it  was  easy  to  stir  up  the  popular  dislike.  No- 
body could  take  their  part,  they  lived  so  entirely  to 
themselves  and  shunned  sympathy  and  society  with  so 
cold  a  disdain.  They  were  men  of  religious  vows  with- 
out the  humility  of  that  condition,  so  they  were  hated 
by  the  nobles,  who  looked  on  priests  as  their  natural  in- 
feriors ;  they  were  nobles  without  the  individual  riches 
of  the  barons  and  counts,  and  they  were  hated  by  the 
priests,  who  were  at  all  times  the  foes  of  the  aristocracy. 
Hated,  therefore,  by  priest  and  noble,  their  policy  would 
have  been  to  make  friends  of  the  lower  orders,  rising 
citizens,  and  the  great  masses  of  the  people.  But  they 
saw  no  necessity  for  altering  their  lofty  course.  They 
bore  right  onward  in  their  haughty  disregard  of  all  the 
rest  of  the  world,  and  were  condemned  by  the  universal 
feeling  before  any  definite  accusation  was  raised  against 
them. 

Clement  yielded  a  faint  consent  to  the  proceedings  of 
Philip,  and  that  honourable  champion  of  the  faith  gave 
full  loose  to  his  covetousness  and  hatred.  First  of  all  he 
prayed  meekly  for  admission  as  a  brother  of  the  order. 
He  would  wear  the  red  cross  upon  his  shoulder  and 
obey  their  godly  laws.  If  he  had  obtained  his  object, 
he  would  have  procured  the  grand-mastership  for  him- 
self and  disposed  of  their  wealth  at  his  own  discretion. 
The  order  might  have  survived,  but  their  possessicms 
would  have  been  Philip's.  They  perhaps  perceived  his 
aim,  and  declined  to  admit  him  into  their  ranks.  A  re- 
jected candidate  soon  changes  his  opinion  of  the  former 
object  of  his  ambition.  He  now  reversed  his  plan,  and 
declared  they  were  unworthy,  not  only  to  wallow  in  the 


ACCUSATIONS   AGAINST   THE   TEMPLARS.  389 

f^ealth  and  splendour  of  their  commanderies,  but  to  live 
in  a  Christian  land.  He  said  they  were  guilty  of  all  the 
crimes  and  enormities  by  which  human  nature  was  ever 
disgraced.  James  do  Molay,  the  grand-master,  and  all 
the  knights  of  the  order  throughout  France,  were  seized 
and  thrown  into  prison.  Letters  were  written  to  all 
other  kings  and  princes,  inciting  them  to  similar  con- 
duct,  and  denouncing  the  doomed  fraternity  in  the 
harshest  terms.  The  promise  of  the  spoil  was  tempting 
to  the  European  sovereigns,  but  all  of  them  resisted  the 
inducement,  or  at  least  took  gentler  methods  of  attaining 
the  same  end.  But  Philip  was  as  much  pleased  with 
the  pursuit  as  with  the  catching  of  the  game.  He  sum- 
moned a  council  of  the  realm,  and  obtained  at  the  same 
time  a  commission  of  inquiry  from  the  Pope.  With 
these  two  courts  to  back  him,  it  was  impossible  to  fail. 
The  knights  were  kept  in  noisome  dungeons.  They 
were  scantily  fed,  and  tormented  with  alternate  pro- 
mises and  threats.  "When  physically  weak  and  mentally 
depressed,  they  were  tortured  in  their  secret  cells,  and 
under  the  pressure  of  fear  and  desperation  confessed  to 
whatever  was  laid  to  their  charge.  Eelieved  from  their 
torments  for  a  moment,  they  retracted  their  confessions; 
but  the  written  words  remained.  And  in  one  day,  before 
1312  *^®  public  had  been  prepared  for  such  extremity 
of  wrong,  fifty-four  of  these  Christian  soldiers — 
now  old,  and  fallen  from  their  high  estate — were  pub- 
licly burned  in  the  place  of  execution,  and  no  further 
limit  was  placed  to  the  rapacity  of  the  king.  Still  the 
odious  process  crept  on  with  the  appearance  of  law,  for 
already  the  forms  of  perverted  justice  were  found  safer 
•and  more  certain  than  either  sword  or  fagot;  and  at 
last,  in  1314,  the  ruined  brotherhood  were  allowed  to 
join  themselves  to  other  fraternities.  The  name  of 
Templar  was  blotted  out  from  the  kniglitly  roll-call  of 


I 


240 


FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 


all  Europe ;  and  in  every  nation,  in  England  and  Scot, 
land  particularly,  the  order  was  despoiled  of  all  its  pos- 
sessions. Clement,  however,  was  furious  at  seeing  the 
moderation  of  rulers  like  Edward  II.,  who  merely 
stripped  the  Templars  of  their  houses  and  lands,  and 
did  not  dahble,  as  his  patron  Philip  had  done,  in  their 
blood,  and  rebuked  them  in  angry  missives  for  their 
coldness  in  the  cause  of  religion. 

IS'ow,  early  in  this  century,  a  Pope  had  been  per- 
sonally ill  used,  and  his  successor  had  become  the  pen- 
sioner and  prisoner  of  one  of  the  basest  of  kings;  a 
glorious  brotherhood  of  Christian  knights  had  been 
shamelessly  and  bloodily  destroyed.  Was  there  no  out- 
cry from  outraged  piety  ? — no  burst  of  indignation  against 
the  perpetrator  of  so  foul  a  wrong  ?  Pity  was  at  last 
excited  by  the  sufferings  and  humiliations  of  the  brothers 
of  the  Temple ;  but  pity  is  not  a  feeling  on  which  knight- 
hood can  depend  for  vitality  or  strength.  Perhaps, 
indeed,  the  sympathy  raised  for  the  sad  ending  of  that 
once-dreaded  institution  was  more  fatal  to  its  revival, 
and  more  injurious  to  the  credit  of  all  surviving  chivalry, 
than  the  greatest  amount  of  odium  would  have  been. 
Speculative  discussions  were  held  about  the  guilt  or  in- 
nocence of  the  Templars,  but  the  worst  of  their  crimes 
was  the  crime  of  being  weak.  If  they  had  continued 
united  and  strong,  nobody  would  have  heard  of  the  ex- 
cesses laid  to  their  charge.  Passing  over  the  impossible 
accusations  brought  against  them  by  ignorance  and 
hatred,  the  offence  they  were  charged  with  which 
raised  the  greatest  indignation,  and  was  least  capable 
of  disproof,  was  that  in  their  reception  into  the  order 
they  spat  upon  the  crucifix  and  trampled  on  the  sign 
of  our  salvation  Nothing  can  be  plainer  than  that  this, 
at  the  first  formation  of  the  order,  had  been  a  symbol, 
which  in  the  course  of  years  had  lost  its  significance 


CHANGES   IN   SOCIETY. 


841 


A.t  first  introduced  as  an  emblem  of  Peter's  denial  and 
of  worldly  disbelief,  to  be  exchanged,  when  once  they 
were  clothed  with  the  Crusader's  mantle,  for  unflinching 
service  and  undoubting  Faith, — a  passage  from  death 
unto  life, — it  had  been  retained  long  after  its  intention 
had  been  forgotten }  and  nothing  is  so  striking  as  the 
confession  of  some  of  the  younger  knights,  of  the  re- 
luctance, the  shame  and  trembling,  with  which,  at  the 
request  of  their  superior,  they  had  gone  through  the  re- 
pulsive ceremony.  This  is  one  of  the  dangers  of  a  sym- 
bolic service.  The  symbol  supersedes  the  fact.  The 
imitation  of  Peter  becomes  a  falling  away  from  Christ. 
But  a  century  before  this  time,  who  can  doubt  that  all 
Christendom  would  have  rushed  to  the  rescue  of  the 
Pope  if  he  had  been  seized  in  his  own  city  and  mal- 
treated as  Boniface  had  been,  and  that  every  gentleman 
in  Europe  would  have  drawn  sword  in  behalf  of  the 
noble  Templars  ? 

But  papacy,  feudalism,  and  knighthood,  as  they  had 
risen  and  flourished  together,  were  enveloped  in  the 
same  fall.  The  society  of  the  Dark  Ages  had  been  per- 
fect in  its  symmetry  and  compactness.  Kings  were  but 
feudal  leaders  and  chiefs  in  their  own  domains.  Knight- 
hood was  but  the  countenance  which  feudalism  turned 
to  its  enemies,  while  hospitality,  protection,  and  alliance 
were  its  off'erings  to  its  friends.  Over  all,  representative 
of  the  heavenly  power  which  cared  for  the  helpless  mul- 
titudes, the  serfs  and  villeins,  those  who  had  no  other 
friend, — the  Church  extended  its  sheltering  arms  to  the 
lowest  of  the  low.  Feudalism  could  take  care  of  itself; 
knighthood  made  itself  feared ;  but  the  multitudes  could 
only  listen  and  be  obedient.  All,  therefore,  who  had  no 
Bword,  and  no  broad  acres,  were  natural  subjects  of  the 
Pope.  But  with  the  rise  of  the  masses  the  relations 
between  them  and  the  Church  became  changed.    It  was 


342  FOURTEENTH    CENTURY. 

found  that  during  the  last  two  hundred  years,  since  the 
awakening  of  mercantile  enterprise  by  the  Crusades 
and  the  commingling  of  the  population  in  those  wild  and 
yet  elevating  expeditions,  by  the  progress  of  the  arts, 
by  the  privileges  wrung  from  king  and  noble  by  flourish- 
ing towns  or  purchased  from  them  with  sterling  coin, 
by  the  deterioration  in  the  morals  of  priest  and  baron, 
and  the  rise  in  personal  importance  of  burghers,  who 
could  fight  like  those  of  Courtrai  or  raise  armies  like 
those  of  Pisa  and  Genoa, — that  the  state  of  society  had 
gradually  been  changed ;  that  the  commons  were  well 
able  to  defend  their  own  interest;  that  the  feudal  pro- 
prietor had  lost  his  relative  rank;  that  the  knight  was  no 
longer  irresistible  as  a  warrior ;  and  that  the  Pope  had 
become  one  of  the  most  worldly  and  least  scrupulous  of 
rulers.  Far  from  being  the  friend  of  the  unprotected, 
the  Church  was  the  subject  of  all  the  ballads  of  every 
nation,  wherein  its  exactions  and  debaucheries  were 
sung  at  village  fairs  and  conned  over  in  chimney- 
corners.  Cannon  were  first  used  in  this  century  at  the 
siege  of  Algesiras  in  1343 ;  and  with  the  first  discharge 
knighthood  fell  forever  from  the  saddle.  The  Bible  was 
first  translated  into  a  national  tongue,*  and  Popery  fell 
forever  from  its  unopposed  dominion.  How,  indeed, 
even  without  this  incident,  could  the  Papacy  have  re- 
tained its  power  ?  From  1305  till  1376  the  wearers  of 
the  tiara  were  the  mere  puppets  of  the  Kings  of  France. 
They  lived  in  a  nominal  freedom  at  Avignon,  but  the 
college  of  electors  was  in  the  pay  of  the  French 
sovereign,  and  the  Pope  was  the  creature  of  his  hands. 
This  was  fatal  to  the  notion  of  his  independence.  But 
a  heavier  blow  was  struck  at  the  unity  of  the  papal 
power  when  a  double  election,  in  1378,  established  two 

»  WickliflTs  English  Bible,  1383. 


DECLINE   OF  THE   PAPACY.  848 

supreme  chiefs,  one  exacting  the  obedience  of  the  faith 
ful  from  his  palace  on  the  banks  of  the  Ehone,  and  the 
other  advancing  the  same  claim  from  the  banks  of  the 
Tiber.  From  this  time  the  choice  of  the  chief  pontiff 
became  a  political  struggle  between  the  principal  kings. 
There  were  French  and  German,  and  even  English, 
parties  in  the  conclave,  and  bribes  were  as  freely  ad- 
ministered as  at  a  contested  election  or  on  a  dubious 
question  in  the  time  of  Sir  Eobert  Walpole.  Family- 
interest  also,  from  this  time,  had  more  effect  on  the 
policy  of  the  Popes  than  the  ambition  to  extend  their 
spiritual  authority.  They  sacrificed  some  portion  of 
their  claims  to  insure  the  elevation  of  their  relations. 
Alliances  were  made,  not  for  the  benefit  of  the  Eoman 
chair,  but  for  some  kinsman's  establishment  in  a  prin- 
cipality. Dukedoms  became  appanages  of  the  papal 
name,  and  every  new  Pope  left  the  mark  of  his  bene- 
ficence in  the  riches  and  influence  of  the  favourite 
nephew  whom  he  had  invested  with  sovereign  rank. 
Italy  became  filled  with  new  dynasties  created  by  these 
means,  and  the  politics  of  the  papal  court  became  com- 
plicated by  this  diversity  of  motive  and  influence.  Yet 
feudalism  struggled  on  in  spite  of  cannon  and  the  rise 
of  the  middle  orders ;  and  Popery  struggled  on  in  spite 
of  the  spread  of  information  and  the  diffusion  of  wealth 
and  freedom.  For  some  time,  indeed,  the  decline  of 
both  those  institutions  was  hidden  by  a  factitious  bril- 
liancy reflected  on  them  by  other  causes.  The  increase 
of  refinement  gave  rise  to  feelings  of  romance,  which 
were  unknown  in  the  days  of  darkness  and  suffering 
through  which  Europe  had  passed.  A  reverence  for 
antiquity  softened  the  harsher  features  by  which  they 
had  been  actually  distinguished,  and  knighthood  became 
subtilized  into  chivalry.  As  the  hard  and  uninviting 
reality  retreated  into  the  past,  the  imagination  clothed 


544  FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 

it  in  enchanting  hues ;  and  at  the  very  time  when  the 
bowmen  and  yeomanry  of  England  had  shown  at  Crecy 
how  unfounded  were  the  "  boast  of  heraldry,  the  pomp 
of  power/'  Edward  III.  had  instituted  the  Order  of  tho 
_-_   Garter, — a  transmutation  as  it  were  of  the  rude 

A,D.  1350.  '  ^  '         ^ 

shocks  of  knighthood  into  carpet  pacings  in  the 
gilded  halls  of  a  palace;  as  in  a  former  age  the  returned 
Crusaders  had  supplied  the  want  of  the  pride  and  cir- 
cumstance of  the  real  charge  against  the  Saracen  by  in- 
troducing the  bloodless  imitation  of  it  afforded  by  the 
tournament.  In  the  same  way  the  personal  disqualifica- 
tion of  the  Pope  was  supplied  by  an  elevation  of  the 
ideal  of  his  place  and  office.  Beligion  became  poetry 
and  sentiment ;  and  though  henceforth  the  reigning  pon- 
tiff was  treated  with  the  harshness  and  sometimes  the 
contempt  his  personal  character  deserved,  his  throne 
was  still  acknowledged  as  the  loftiest  of  earthly  thrones. 
The  plaything  of  the  present  was  nevertheless  an  idol 
and  representative  of  the  past ;  and  kings  who  drove 
him  from  his  home,  or  locked  him  up  in  their  prisons, 
pretended  to  tremble  at  his  anger,  and  received  his 
letters  on  their  knees. 

It  must  have  been  evident  to  any  far-seeing  observer 
that  some  gi*eat  change  was  in  progress  during  the 
whole  of  this  century,  not  so  much  from  the  results  of 
Courtrai,  or  Crecy,  or  Poictiers,  or  the  migration  of  the 
Pope  to  Avignon,  or  the  increasing  riches  of  the  trading 
and  manufacturing  towns,  as  from  the  great  uprising  of 
the  human  mind  which  was  shown  by  the  almost  simul- 
taneous appearance  of  such  stars  of  literature  as  Dante, 
and  Petrarch,  and  Boccaccio,  and  our  English  Chaucer. 
1  suppose  no  single  century  since  has  been  in  possession 
of  four  such  men.  Great  geniuses,  indeed,  and  great 
discoveries,  seem  to  come  in  crops,  as  if  a  certain  period 
oad  been  fixed  for  their  bursting  into  flower;  and  we 


LITERARY   DEVELOPMENT. 


34£ 


find  the  same  grand  ideas  engaging  the  intellects  of  men 
widely  dispersed,  so  that  a  novelty  in  art  or  science  is 
generally  disputed  between  contending  nations.  But 
this  synchronous  development  of  power  is  symptomatic 
of  some  wide-spread  tendency,  which  alters  the  ordinary 
course  of  affairs ;  and  we  see  in  the  Canterbury  Tales 
the  dawning  of  the  Eeformation;  in  Shakspeare  and 
Bacon  the  inauguration  of  a  new  order  of  government 
and  manners ;  in  Locke  and  Milton  a  still  further  libera- 
tion from  the  chains  of  a  worn-out  philosophy ;  in  "Watt, 
and  Fulton,  and  Cartwright,  we  see  the  spread  of  civili- 
zation and  power.  In  Walter  Scott  and  Wordsworth, 
and  the  wonderful  galaxy  of  literary  stars  who  illumi- 
nated the  beginning  of  this  century,  we  see  Waterloo 
and  Peace,  a  widening  of  national  sympathies,  and  the 
opening  of  a  great  future  career  to  all  the  nations  of  the 
world.  For  nothing  is  so  true  an  index  of  the  state  and 
prospects  of  a  people  as  the  healthfulness  and  honest 
taste  of  its  literature.  It  was  in  this  sense ^that  Flet- 
cher of  Saltoun  said,  (or  quoted,)  "  Give  me  the  making 
of  the  ballads  of  a  people,  and  I  don't  care  who  makes 
the  laws."  While  we  have  such  pure  and  wholesome 
literature  as  is  furnished  us  by  Hallam,  and  Macaulay, 
and  Alison,  by  Tennyson,  Dickens,  Thackeray,  and  the 
rest,  philosophy  like  Hamilton's,  and  science  like  Her- 
schel's  and  Faraday's,  we  have  no  cause  to  look  forward 
with  doubt  or  apprehension. 

"  Naught  shall  make  us  rue 
If  England  to  herself  do  rest  but  true." 

But  those  pioneers  of  the  Fourteenth  Century  had 
dangers  and  difficulties  to  encounter  from  which  their 
successors  have  been  free.  It  is  a  very  different  thing 
for  authors  to  write  for  the  applause  of  an  appreciating 
public,  and  for  them  to  create  an  appreciating  public  for 
themselves.     Their  audience   must  at  first  have   been 


*40  FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 

nostilc.  First,  the  critical  and  scholarly  part  of  the 
world  was  offended  with  the  bad  taste  of  writing  in  the 
modern  languages  at  all.  Secondly,  the  pitch  at  which 
they  struck  the  national  note  was  too  high  for  the  ears 
of  the  vulgar.  A  correct  and  dignified  use  of  the 
spoken  tongue,  the  conveyance,  in  ordinary  and  familiar 
words,  of  lofty  or  poetical  thoughts,  filled  both  those 
Classes  with  surprise.  To  the  scholar  it  seemed  good 
materials  enveloped  in  a  very  unworthy  covering.  To 
"  the  general"  it  seemed  an  attempt  to  deprive  them  of 
their  vernacular  phrases  and  bring  bad  grammar  and 
coarse  expressions  into  disrepute.  Petrarch  was  so 
conscious  of  this  that  he  speaks  apologetically  of  his 
sonnets  in  Italian,  and  founds  his  hope  of  future  fame 
on  his  Latin  verses.  But  more  important  than  the 
poems  of  Dante  and  Chaucer,  or  the  prose  of  Boccaccio, 
was  the  introduction  of  the  new  literature  represented 
by  Froissart.  Hitherto  chronicles  had  for  the  most  part 
consisted  of  the  record  of  such  wandering  rumours  as 
reached  a  monastery  or  were  gathered  in  the  religious 
pilgrimages  of  holy  men.  Mingled,  even  the  best  of 
them,  with  the  credulity  of  inexperienced  and  simple 
minds,  their  effect  was  lost  on  the  contemporary  gene- 
ration by  the  isolation  of  the  writers.  I^obody  beyond 
the  convent-walls  knew  what  the  learned  historians  of 
the  establishment  had  been  doing.  Their  "svritings  were 
not  brought  out  into  the  light  of  universal  day,  and  a 
knowledge  of  European  society  gathered  point  by  point, 
by  comparing,  analyzing,  and  contrasting  the  various 
statements  contained  in  those  dispersed  repositories. 
But  at  this  time  there  came  into  notice  the  most  inquir- 
ing, enterprising,  picturesque,  and  entertaining  chroni- 
cler that  had  ever  appeared  since  Herodotus  read  the 
result  of  his  personal  travels  and  sagacious  'nquiries  to 
the  assembled  multitudes  of  Greece. 


FROISSART.  W 

John  Froissart,  called  by  the  courtesy  of  the  time  Sii 
John,  in  honour  of  his  being  priest  and  chaplain,  de- 
voted a  long  life  to  the  collection  of  the  fullest  and  most 
trustworthy  accounts  of  all  the  events  and  personages 
characteristic  of  his  time.  From  1326,  when  his  labours 
commenced,  to  1400,  when  his  active  pen  stood  still, 
nothing  happened  in  any  part  of  Europe  that  the  Paul 
Pry  of  the  period  did  not  rush  off  to  verify  on  the  spot. 
If  he  heard  of  an  assemblage  of  knights  going  on  at  the 
extremities  of  France  or  in  the  centre  of  Germany,  of 
a  tournament  at  Bordeaux,  a  court  gala  in  Scotland,  or 
a  marriage  festival  at  Milan,  his  travels  began, — whether 
in  the  humble  guise  of  a  solitary  horseman  with  his 
portmanteau  behind  his  saddle  and  a  single  greyhound 
at  his  heels,  as  he  jogged  wearily  across  the  Border,  till 
he  finally  arrived  in  Edinburgh,  or  in  his  grander  stylo 
of  equipment,  gallant  steed,  with  hackney  led  beside 
him,  and  four  dogs  of  high  race  gambolling  round  his 
horse,  as  he  made  his  dignified  journey  from  Ferrara  to 
Rome.  Wherever  life  was  to  bo  seen  and  painted,  the 
indefatigable  Froissart  was  to  be  found.  Whatever  ho 
had  gathered  up  on  former  expeditions,  whatever  he 
learned  on  his  present  tour,  down  it  went  in  his  own 
exquisite  language,  with  his  own  poetical  impression  of 
the  pomps  and  pageantries  ho  beheld ;  and  when  at  the 
end  of  his  journey  he  reached  the  court  of  prince  or 
potentate,  no  higher  treat  could  be  offered  to  the  "noble 
lords  and  ladies  bright"  than  to  form  a  glittering  circle 
round  the  enchanting  chronicler  and  listen  to  what  he 
had  written.  From  palace  to  palace,  from  castle  to 
castle,  the  unwearied  "picker-up  of  unconsidered  trifles" 
(which,  however,  were  neither  trifles  nor  unconsidered, 
when  their  true  value  became  known,  as  giving  life  and 
reality  to  the  annals  of  a  whole  period)  pursued  his 
happy  way,  certain  of  a  friendly  reception  when  he 


848 


FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 


arrived,  and  certain  of  not  losing  his  time  by  negligence 
or  blindness  on  the  road.  If  he  overtakes  a  stately  cava* 
Her,  attended  by  squires  and  men-at-arms,  he  enters  into 
conversation,  drawing  out  the  experiences  of  the  vene- 
rable warrior  by  relating  to  him  all  he  knew  of  things 
and  persons  in  which  he  took  an  interest.  And  when 
they  put  up  at  some  hostelry  on  the  road,  and  while 
the  gallant  knight  was  sound  asleep  on  his  straw-stuffed 
couch,  and  his  followers  were  wallowing  amid  the  rushes 
on  the  parlour  floor,  Froissart  was  busy  with  pen  and 
note-book,  scoring  down  all  the  old  gentleman  had  told 
him,  all  the  fights  he  had  been  present  at,  and  the  secret 
history  (if  any)  of  the  councils  of  priests  and  kings.  In 
this  way  knights  in  distant  parts  of  the  world  became 
known  to  each  other.  The  same  voice  which  described 
to  Douglas  at  Dalkeith  the  exploits  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales  sounded  the  praises  of  Douglas  in  the  ears  of  the 
Black  Prince  at  Bordeaux.  A  community  of  sentiment 
was  produced  between  the  upper  ranks  of  all  nations  by 
this  common  register  of  their  acts  and  feelings ;  and 
knighthood  received  its  most  ennobling  consummation 
in  these  imperishable  descriptions,  at  the  very  time  when 
its  political  and  military  influence  came  to  a  close 
Froissart's  Chronicles  are  the  epitaph  of  feudalism, 
written  indeed  while  it  was  yet  alive,  but  while  its 
strength  was  only  the  convulsive  energy  of  approaching 
death.  The  standard  of  knightly  virtue  became  raised 
in  proportion  as  knightly  power  decayed.  In  the  same 
way  as  the  increased  civilization  and  elevating  influences 
of  the  time  clothed  the  Church  in  colours  borrowed 
from  the  past,  while  its  real  influence  was  seriously  im- 
paired, the  expiring  embers  of  knighthood  occasionally 
flashed  up  into  something  higher ;  and  in  this  century 
we  read  of  Du  Guesclin  of  France,  Walter  Manny  and 
Edward  the  Third  of  England,  and  many  others,  who 


CHIVALRY.  345 

illustrated   the  order  with   qualifications  it  had  never 
possessed  in  its  palmiest  state. 

Courtrai  was  fought  and  Amadis  de  Gaul  written 
almost  at  the  same  time.  Let  us  therefore  mark,  as  a 
characteristic  of  the  period  we  have  reached,  the  decay 
of  knighthood,  or  feudalism  in  its  armour  of  proof,  and 
the  growth  at  the  same  time  of  a  sense  of  honour  and 
generosity,  which  contrasted  strangely  in  its  softened 
and  sentimentalized  refinement  with  the  harshness  and 
cruelty  which  still  clung  to  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life. 
Thus  the  young  conqueror  of  Poictiers  led  his  captive 
John  into  London  with  the  respectful  attention  of  a 
grateful  subject  to  a  crowned  king.  He  waited  on  him 
at  table,  and  made  him  forget  the  humiliation  of  defeat 
and  the  griefs  of  imprisonment  in  the  sympathy  and 
reverence  with  which  he  was  everywhere  surrounded. 
This  same  prince  was  regardless  of  human  life  or  suffer- 
ing where  the  theatrical  show  of  magnanimity  was  not 
within  his  reach,  bloodthirsty  and  tyrannical,  and  is  de- 
clared by  the  chronicler  himself  to  be  of  "  a  high,  over- 
bearing spirit,  and  cruel  in  his  hatred."  It  shows,  how- 
ever, what  an  advance  had  already  been  made  in  the 
influence  of  public  opinion,  when  we  read  how  generally 
the  treatment  of  the  noble  captive,  John  of  France,  was 
appreciated.  In  former  ages,  and  even  at  present  in 
nations  of  a  lower  state  of  feelings,  the  kind  treatment 
of  a  fallen  enemy,  or  the  sparing  of  a  helpless  popula- 
tion, would  be  attributed  to  Aveakness  or  fear.  Chivalry, 
which  was  an  attempt  to  amalgamate  the  Christian 
virtues  with  the  rougher  requirements  of  the  feudal  code, 
taught  the  duty  of  being  pitiful  as  well  as  brave.  And 
though  at  this  period  that  feeling  only  existed  between 
knight  and  knight,  and  was  not  yet  extended  to  their 
treatment  of  the  common  herd,  the  principle  was 
asserted  that  war  could  be  carried  on  without  personal 


550  FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 

animosity,  and  that  courage,  endurance,  and  the  other 
knightly  qualities  were  to  be  admired  as  much  in  an 
enemy  as  a  friend. 

There  was,  however,  another  reason  for  this  besides 
the  natural  admiration  which  great  deeds  are  sure  to 
call  forth  in  natures  capable  of  performing  them  j  and 
that  was,  that  Europe  was  divided  into  petty  sove- 
reignties, too  weak  to  maintain  their  independence  witn- 
oat  foreign  aid,  too  proud  to  submit  to  another  govern- 
ment, and  trusting  to  the  support  their  money  or  influ- 
ence could  procure.  In  all  countries,  therefore,  there 
existed  bodies  of  mercenary  soldiers — or  Free  Lances, 
as  they  were  called — claiming  the  dignity  and  rank  of 
knights  and  noblemen,  who  never  knew  whether  the 
men  they  were  fighting  to-day  might  not  be  their  com- 
rades and  followers  to-morrow.  In  Italy,  always  a 
country  of  divisions  and  enmities,  there  were  armed  com- 
batants secured  on  either  side.  Unconnected  with  the 
country  they  defended  by  any  ties  of  kindred  or  allegi- 
ance, they  found  themselves  opposed  to  a  body,  perhaps 
of  their  countrymen,  certainly  of  their  former  com- 
panions ;  and,  except  so  much  as  was  required  to  earn 
their  pay  and  preserve  their  reputation,  they  did  nothing 
that  might  be  injurious  to  their  temporary  foes.  Battles 
accordingly  were  fought  where  feats  of  horsemanship 
and  dexterity  at  their  weapons  were  shown ;  where  rushes 
were  made  into  the  vacant  space  between  the  armies 
by  contending  warriors,  and  horse  and  man  acquitted 
themselves  with  the  acclamations,  and  almost  with  the 
safety,  of  a  charge  in  the  amphitheatre  at  Astley's. 
But  no  blood  was  spilt,  no  life  was  taken ;  and  a  long 
summer  day  has  seen  a  confused  melee  going  on  be- 
tween the  hired  combatants  of  two  cities  or  principali- 
ties, without  a  single  casualty  more  serious  than  a  cava- 
lier thrown  from  his  horse  and  unable  to  rise  from  the 


GKEAT   EVENTS   OF   THE   CENTURY.  351 

»v^eiglit  and  tightness  of  his  armour.  Fights  of  this 
kind  could  scarcely  be  considered  in  earnest,  and  we  are 
not  surprised  to  find  that  the  burden  and  heat  of.  an 
engagement  was  thrown  upon  the  light-armed  foot :  we 
gather,  indeed,  towards  the  end  of  Froissart's  Chronicles, 
that  while  the  cavaliers  persisted  in  endeavouring  to 
distinguish  their  individual  prowess,  as  at  the  battle  of 
Navareta  in  Spain,  and  got  into  confusion  in  their 
eagerness  of  assault,  "the  sharpness  of  the  English 
arrows  began  to  be  felt,"  and  the  fate  of  the  battle  de- 
pended on  the  unflinching  line  and  impregnable  solidity 
of  the  archers  and  foot-soldiers.  These  latter  took  a 
deeper  interest  in  the  result  than  the  more  showy  per- 
formers, and  were  not  carried  away  by  the  vanities  of 
personal  display. 

Look  at  the  year  1300,  with  the  jubilee  of  Boniface 
going  on.  Look  at  1400,  with  the  death  of  Chaucer  and 
Froissart,  and  the  enthroning  of  Henry  the  Fourth,  and 
what  an  amount  of  incident,  of  change  and  improve- 
ment, has  been  crowded  into  the  space !  The  rise  of 
national  literatures,  the  softening  of  feudalism,  the  de- 
cline of  Church  power, — these — illustrated  by  Dante  and 
Chaucer,  by  the  alteration  in  the  art  of  war,  and  above 
all,  perhaps,  by  the  translation  of  the  Bible  into  the 
vulgar  tongue — were  not  only  the  fruits  gained  for  the 
present,  but  the  promise  of  greater  things  to  come 
There  will  be  occasional  backslidings  after  this  time, 
but  the  onward  progress  is  steady  and  irresistible :  the 
regressions  are  but  the  reflux  waves  in  an  advancing 
tide,  caused  by  the  very  force  and  vitality  of  the  great 
sea  beyond.  And  after  this  view  of  some  of  the  main 
features  of  the  century,  we  shall  take  a  very  cursory 
glance  at  some  of  the  principal  events  on  which  the  por- 
traiture is  founded. 

It  is  a  bad  sign  of  the  early  part  of  this  period  that 
our  great  landmarks  are   still  battles  and  invasions 


'52  FOURTEENTH  CENTURY. 

After  Courtrai  in  1302,  where  the  nobility  rushed  blind* 
fold  into  a  natural  ditch,  we  come  upon  Bannockburn  in 
1311  ^^^"^y  where  Edward  the  Second,  not  compre- 
hending the  aim  of  his  more  politic  father, — 
whose  object  was  to  counterpoise  the  growing  power  of 
the  French  monarchy  by  consolidating  his  influence  at 
home, — had  marched  rather  to  revenge  his  outraged 
dignity  than  to  establish  his  denied  authority,  and  waf. 
signally  defeated  by  Eobert  Bruce.  Is  it  not  possible 
that  the  stratagem  by  which  the  English  chivalry 
suffered  so  much  by  means  of  the  pits  dug  for  their  re^ 
ception  in  the  space  in  front  of  the  Scottish  lines  wah 
borrowed  from  Courtrai, — art  supplying  in  that  dry 
plain  near  Stirling  what  nature  had  furnished  to  the 
marshy  Brabant  ?  However  this  may  be,  the  same  fatal 
result  ensued.  Pennon  and  standard,  waving  plumo 
and  flashing  sword,  disappeared  in  thoGe  yawning  gulfs, 
and  at  the  present  hour  very  rusty  spurs  and  fragments 
of  broken  helmets  are  dug  from  beneath  the  soil  to  mark 
the  greatness  and  the  quality  of  the  slaughter.  Mean- 
time, in  compact  phalanx — ^protected  by  the  knights  and 
gentlemen  on  the  flanks,  but  left  to  its  own  free  action 
— ^the  Scottish  array  bore  on.  Strong  spear  and  sharp 
sword  did  the  rest,  and  the  English  army,  shorn  of  its 
cavalry,  disheartened  by  the  loss  of  its  leaders,  and 
finally  deserted  by  its  pusillanimous  king,  retreated  in 
confusion,  and  all  hope  of  retaining  the  country  by  the 
right  of  conquest  was  forever  laid  aside.  Poor  Edward 
had,  in  appalling  consciousness  of  his  own  imperfections, 
applied  to  the  Pope  for  permission  to  rub  himself  with 
an  ointment  that  would  make  him  brave.  Either  the 
Pope  refused  his  consent  or  the  ointment  failed  of  its 
purpose.  1^0 thing  could  rouse  a  brave  thought  in  the 
heart  of  the  fallen  Plantagenet.  Sir  Giles  de  Argentine 
might  have  been  more  eflectual  than  all  the  unguents  in 
the  world.     He  led  the  king  by  the  bridle  till  he  saw 


DEFEAT   OF   THE    FLEMINGS. 


35? 


hiin  in  a  place  of  safety.  He  then  stopped  his  horse 
and  said,  "  It  has  never  been  my  custom  to  fly,  and  here 
I  must  take  my  fortune."  Saying  this,  he  put  spurs  to 
his  horse,  and,  crying  out,  "An  Argentine  !"  charged  the 
squadron  of  Edward  Bruce,  and  was  borne  down  by  the 
force  of  the  Scottish  spears.  The  fugitive  king  galloped 
in  teiTor  to  the  castle  of  Dunbar,  and  shipped  off  by  sea 
to  Berwick. 

The  next  battle  is  so  strongly  corroborative  of  the 
failing  supremacy  of  heavy  armour,  and  the  rising  im- 
portance of  the  well-trained  citizens,  that  it  is  worth 
mention,  although  at  first  sight  it  seems  to  controvert 
both  these  statements ;  for  it  was  a  fight  in  which  cer- 
tain courageous  burghers  were  mercilessly  exterminated 
by  gorgeously-caparisoned  knights.  The  townsmen  of 
Bruges  and  Ypres  had  grown  so  proud  and  pugnacious 

1328  *^^*  ^^  ^^^^  *^^^  advanced  to  Cassel  to  do 
*  battle  with  the  young  King  of  France,  Philip 
of  Yalois,  at  the  head  of  all  his  chivalry.  There  was  a 
vast  amount  of  mutual  contempt  in  the  two  armies. 
The  leader  of  the  bold  Flemings,  who  was  known  as 
Little  Jack,  entered  the  enemy's  camp  in  disguise,  and 
found  young  lords  in  splendid  gowns  proceeding  from 
point  to  point,  gossiping,  visiting,  and  interchanging 
their  invitations.  Making  his  way  back,  he  ordered  a 
charge  at  once.  The  rush  was  nearly  successful,  and 
was  only  checked  within  a  few  yards  of  the  royal  tent. 
But  the  check  was  tremendous.  The  bloated  burghers, 
filled  with  pride  and  gorged  with  wealth,  had  thought 
proper  to  ensconce  their  unwieldy  persons  in  cuirasses 
as  brilliant  and  embarrassing  as  the  armour  of  the 
knights.  The  knights,  however,  were  on  horseback, 
fiiid  the  embattled  townsfolk  were  on  foot.  Great  was 
the  slaughter,  useless  the  attempt  to  escape,  and  thir* 
teen  thousand  were   overborne   and   smothered.     Ten 


364 


FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 


thousand  more  were  executed  by  some  form  of  law, 
and  the  Bourgeoisie  taught  to  rely  for  its  safety  on  its 
agility  and  compactness,  and  not  on  "  helm  or  hauberk's 
twisted  mail.'' 

The  crop  of  battles  grows  rich  and  plentiful,  for 
Edward  the  Third  and  Philip  of  Yalois  are  rival  kings 
and  warriors,  and  may  be  taken  as  the  representatives 
of  the  two  states  of  society  which  were  brought  at  this 
time  face  to  face.  For  Edward,  though  as  true  a  knight 
as  Amadis  himself  in  his  own  person,  in  policy  was  a 
favourer  of  the  now  ideas.  When  the  war  broke  out, 
Philip  behaved  as  if  no  change  had  taken  place  in  the 
seat  of  power  and  the  world  had  still  continued  divided 
between  the  lords  and  their  armed  retainers.  He  threw 
himself  for  support  on  the  military  service  of  his  tenants 
and  the  aristocratic  spirit  of  his  nobles.  Edward,  wiser 
but  less  romantic,  turned  for  assistance  to  the  Commons 
of  England, — bought  over  their  good  will  and  copious 
contributions  by  privileges  granted  to  their  trades, — in- 
vited skilled  workmen  over  from  Flanders,  which,  with 
the  freest  spirit  in  Europe,  was  under  the  least  improved 
of  the  feudal  governments, — and  established  woollen- 
works  at  York,  fustian-works  at  ^Norwich,  serges  at  Col- 
chester, and  kerseys  in  Devonshire.  Mills  were  whirling 
round  in  all  the  counties,  and  ships  coming  in  untaxed 
at  every  harbour.  Fortunately,  as  is  always  the  case  in 
this  country,  it  was  seen  that  the  success  of  one  class 
of  the  people  was  beneficial  to  every  other  class.  The 
baron  got  more  rent  for  his  land  and  better  cloth  for  his 
apparel  by  the  prosperity  of  his  manufacturing  neigh- 
hours.  Money  was  voted  readily  in  support  of  a  king 
who  entered  into  alliance  with  their  best  customers,  the 
men  of  Ghent  and  Bruges ;  and  at  the  head  of  all  the 
levies  which  the  parliament's  liberality  enabled  him  to 
raise  wera  the  knights  and  gentlemen  of  England,  totally 
freed  now  from  any  bias  towards  the  French  or  prejudic<^ 


VICTORY   OF  HELVOET   SLUYS.  85f' 

against  the  Saxon ;  for  they  spoke  the  English  tongue, 
dressed  in  English  broadcloth,  sang  English  ballads,  and 
astonished  the  men  of  Gascony  and  Guienne  with  the 
vehemence  of  their  unmistakably  English  oaths.  Yet 
some  of  them  held  lands  in  feudal  subjection  to  the 
French  king.  Flanders  itself  confessed  the  sam-e  sove- 
reignty ;  and  men  of  delicate  consciences  might  feel  un- 
easy if  they  lifted  the  sword  against  their  liege  lord.  To 
soothe  their  scruples,  James  Van  Arteveldt,  the  Brewer 
of  Ghent,  suggested  to  Edward  the  propriety  of  his  as- 
suming the  title  of  King  of  France.  The  rebellious  free- 
holders would  then  be  in  their  duty  in  supporting  their 
liege's  claims.  So  Edward,  founding  uj)on  the  birth  of 
his  mother,  the  daughter  of  the  last  King,  Philip  le 
Bel, — who  was  excluded  by  the  Salic  law,  or  at  least  by 
French  custom,  from  the  throne, — made  claim  to  the 
crown  of  St.  Louis,  and  transmitted  the  barren  title  to 
all  his  successors  till  the  reign  of  George  the  Fourth. 
As  if  in  right  of  his  property  on  both  sides  of  the  Chan- 
nel, Edward  converted  it  into  his  exclusive  domain. 
He  so  entirely  exterminated  the  navy  of  France,  and 
1340  i^pr^ssed  that  chivalrous  nation  with  the  dan- 
ger of  the  seas  by  the  victory  of  Helvoet  Sluys, 
that  for  several  centuries  the  command  of  the  strait  was 
left  undisputed  to  England.  Philip  had  endeavoured  to 
obtain  the  mastery  of  it  with  a  fleet  of  a  hundred  and 
fifty  ships,  mounted  by  forty  thousand  men.  The  Geno- 
ese had  furnished  an  auxiliary  squadron,  and  also  a 
commander-in-chief,  of  the  name  of  Barbavara.  But 
the  French  admiral  was  a  civilian  of  the  name  of  Bah  u- 
chet,  who  thought  the  safest  plan  was  the  best,  and  kept 
his  whole  force  huddled  up  in  the  commodious  harbour. 
Edward  collected  a  fleet  of  scarcely  inferior  strength, 
and  fell  upon  the  enemy  as  they  lay  within  the  port.  It 
was  in  fact  a  fight  on  the  land,  for  they  ranged  so  close 
that  they  almost  touched  each  other,  and  th^  gallant 


356  FOURTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Bahuchet  preserved  himself  from  sea-sickness  at  the 
expense  of  all  their  lives.  For  the  English  archers  made 
an  incredible  havoc  on  their  crowded  decks,  and  the 
pike-men  boarded  with  irresistible  power.  Twenty 
thousand  were  slain  in  that  fearful  melee;  and  Edward, 
to  show  how  sincere  he  was  in  his  claim  upon  the  throne 
of  France,  hanged  the  unfortunate  Bahuchet  as  a  traitc  r. 
The  man  deserved  his  fate  as  a  coward :  so  we  need  not 
waste  much  sympathy  on  the  manner  of  his  death.  This 
success  with  his  ships  was  soon  followed  by  the  better- 
known  victory  of  Crecy,  1316,  and  the  capture  of  Calais. 
In  ten  years  afterwards,  the  crowning  triumph 
of  Poictiers  completed  the  destruction  of  the 
military  power  of  France,  by  a  slaughter  nearly  as  great 
as  that  at  Sluys  and  Crecy.  In  addition  to  the  loss  of 
lives  in  these  three  engagements,  amounting  to  upwards 
of  ninety  thousand  men,  we  are  to  consider  the  im- 
poverishment of  the  country  by  the  exorbitant  ransoms 
claimed  for  the  release  of  prisoners.  John,  the  French 
king,  was  valued  at  three  million  crowns  of  gold, — an 
immense  sum,  which  it  would  have  exhausted  the  king- 
dom to  raise ;  and,  in  addition  to  those  destructive  fights 
and  crushing  exactions,  France  was  further  weakened 
by  the  insurrection  of  the  peasantry  and  the  frightful 
massacres  by  which  it  was  put  down.  If  to  these 
causes  of  weakness  we  add  the  depopulation  produced 
by  the  unequalled  pestilence,  called  the  Plague  of 
Florence,  which  spread  all  over  the  world,  and  in  the 
space  of  a  year  earned  off  nearly  a  third  of  the  inhabit- 
ants of  Europe,  we  shall  be  justified  in  believing  that 
France  was  reduced  to  the  lowest  condition  she  has  ever 
reached,  and  that  only  the  dotage  of  Edward,  the  death 
of  the  Black  Prince,  and  the  accession  of  a  king  like 
Richard  II.,  saved  that  noble  country  from  being,  for  a 
while  at  least,  tributary  and  subordinate  to  her  island- 
conqueror. 


FIFTEENTH  CENTURY. 


ISmpcvocs  of  (Sermang. 

1400.  Rupert. 
1410.  Jossus. 

L410.   SiGISMUND. 

House  of  Austria, 
1438.  Albert  II. 
1440.  Frederick  IV. 
1493.  Maximilian  I. 


iSmpetors  of  tf)c  IHast. 

A.D. 

Manuel  PALiB0L0Gus.-< 
{conL) 

1425.  John  Pal^»logus  II. 

1448.  Constantinb  XIII.,  (Pa- 
l^eologus.) 

1453.  Capture  of  Constantino- 
ple by  the  Turks,  and 
close  of  the  Eastern 
Empire. 


Kittfis  of  ISnglan^. 

1399.  Henrt  IV. 
1413.  Henry  V. 
1422.  Henry  VI. 
1461.  Edwtard  IV. 
1483.  Edward  V. 

1483,  BiCHARD  III. 

1485.  Henry  VII. 

Mum  of  £cotlanb. 

Egbert  III. — {coni.) 
1406.  James  I. 
1437.  James  II. 
1460.  James  III. 
1488.  James  IV. 

1452.  Invention  of  Printing. 

1455.  Wars  of  the  Roses  begin. 

1483,  Lutuer  born.  1492.  Discovery  or  America. 

iSminent  Mtn. 

John  Huss.  (1370-1415.)  Ximines 


Sultans  of  CurfeeB* 

1451.  Mohammed  II. 
1481.  Bajazet  II. 

ItinfiS  of  dFtance, 

Charles  VI. — {coni.) 
1422.  Charles  VII. 
1461.  Louis  XI. 
1483.  Charles  VIII. 
1498.  Louis  XII. 

icings  of  Spain. 

1479.  Union  of  the  Blingdom 
under  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella 


THE  FIFTEENTH  CENTUEl 

DECLINE   OP  FEUDALISM — ^AGINCOURT— JOAN   OP  ARC5 — THE 
PRINTING-PRESS — DISCOVERY   OP   AMERICA. 

The  whole  period  from  the  twelfth  to  the  fifteenth 
century  has  generally  been  considered  so  unvarying  in 
its  details,  one  century  so  like  another,  that  it  has  been 
thought  sufficient  to  class  them  all  under  the  general 
name  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Old  Monteil,  indeed,  the 
author  of  "  The  French  People  of  Yarious  Conditions," 
declines  to  individualize  any  age  during  that  lengthened 
epoch,  for  "feudalism,"  he  says,  "is  as  little  capable  of 
change  as  the  castles  with  which  it  studded  the  land." 
But  a  closer  inspection  does  by  no  means  justify  this 
declaration.  From  time  to  time  we  have  seen  what 
great  changes  have  taken  place.  The  external  walls  of 
the  baronial  residence  may  continue  the  same,  but  vast 
alterations  have  occurred  within.  The  rooms  have  got 
a  more  modern  air ;  the  moat  has  begun  to  be  dried  up, 
and  turned  into  a  bowling-green ;  the  tilt-yard  is  occa- 
sionally converted  into  a  garden ;  and,  in  short,  in  all 
the  civilized  countries  of  Europe  the  life  of  society  has 
accumulated  at  the  heart.  Power  is  diffused  from  the 
courts  of  kings;  and  instead  of  the  spirit  of  indepen- 
dence and  opposition  to  the  royal  authority  which 
characterized  former  centuries,  we  find  the  courtiers'  arts 
more  prevalent  now  than  the  pride  of  local  grandeur. 
The  great  vassals  of  the  Crown  are  no  longer  the  rivals 
of  their  nominal  superior,  but  submissively  receive  his 

359 


90"  FIFTEENTH    CENTURY. 

awards,  or  endeavour  to  obtain  the  sanction  of  his  name 
to  exactions  which  they  would  formerly  have  practised 
in  their  own.  Monarchy,  in  fact,  becomes  the  spirit  of 
the  ago,  and  nobility  sinks  willingly  into  the  subordinate 
rank  This  itself  was  a  great  blow  to  the  feudal  system, 
for  the  essence  of  that  organized  society  was  equality 
among  its  members,  united  to  subordination  of  conven- 
tional rank, — a  strange  and  beautiful  style  of  feeling 
between  the  highest  and  the  lowest  of  that  manly  brother- 
hood, which  made  the  simple  chevalier  equal  to  the 
king  as  touching  their  common  knighthood, — of  which 
we  have  at  the  present  time  the  modernized  form  in  the 
feeling  which  makes  the  loftiest  in  the  land  recognise 
an  equal  and  a  friend  in  the  person  of  an  untitled  gen- 
tleman. But  this  latter  was  to  be  the  result  of  the 
equalizing  effect  of  education  and  character.  In  the  fif- 
teenth century,  feudalism,  represented  by  the  great  pro- 
prietors, was  about  to  expire,  as  it  had  already  perished 
in  the  decay  of  its  armed  and  mailed  representatives  in 
the  field  of  battle.  By  no  lower  hand  than  its  own 
could  the  nobility  be  overthrown  either  in  France  or 
England.  The  accident  of  a  feeble  king  in  both  coun- 
tries was  the  occasion  of  an  internecine  struggle, — not, 
as  it  would  have  been  in  the  tenth  century,  for  the  pos- 
session of  the  crown,  but  for  the  custody  of  the  wearer 
of  it.  The  insanity  of  Charles  YI.  almost  exterminated 
the  lords  of  France;  the  weakness  of  Henry  YI.  and 
the  Wars  of  the  Hoses  jjroduced  the  same  result  in 
England.  It  seemed  as  if  in  both  countries  an  epidemic 
madness  had  burst  out  among  the  nobility,  which  drove 
them  to  their  destruction.  Wildly  contending  with 
each  other,  neglecting  and  oppressing  the  common 
people,  the  lords  and  barons  were  unconscious  of  the 
silent  advances  of  a  power  which  was  about  to  over- 
c^dow  them  all.    And,  as  if  to  drive  away  from  them 


DECLINE   OF   NOBILITY.  86i 

the  sympathy  which  their  fathers  had  known  how  to 
excite  among  the  lower  classes  by  their  kindness  and 
protection,  they  seemed  determined  to  obliterate  every 
vestige  of  respect  which  might  cling  to  their  ancient 
possessions  and  historic  names,  by  the  most  unheard- 
of  cruelty  and  falsehood  in  their  treatment  of  each 
other. 

The  leader  of  one  of  the  parties  which  divided  France 
was  John,  son  of  Philip  the  Hardy,  prince  of  the  blood 
royal  and  Duke  of  Burgundy.  The  leader  of  the  other 
party  was  Louis  of  Orleans,  brother  of  the  demented 
king,  and  the  gayest  cavalier  and  most  accomplished 
gentleman  of  his  time.  The  Burgundian  had  many 
advantages  in  his  contest  for  the  reins  of  government. 
The  wealth  and  population  of  the  Low  Countries  made 
him  as  powerful  as  any  of  the  princes  of  Europe,  and 
he  could  at  all  times  secure  the  alliance  of  England  to 
the  most  nefarious  of  his  schemes  by  the  bribe  of  a 
treaty  of  trade  and  navigation.  He  accordingly  brought 
his  great  possessions  in  Flanders  to  the  aid  of  his  French 
ambition,  and  secured  the  almost  equally  important 
assistance  of  the  University  of  Paris,  by  giving  in  his 
adhesion  to  the  Pope  it  had  chosen  and  denying  the 
authority  of  the  Pope  of  his  rival  Orleans.  Orleans  had 
also  offended  the  irritable  population  of  Paris  by  making 
his  vows,  on  some  solemn  occasion,  by  the  bones  of  St. 
Denis  which  adorned  the  shrine  of  the  town  called  after 
his  name, — whereas  it  was  well  known  to  every  Parisian 
that  the  real  bones  of  the  patron  of  France  were  those 
which  were  so  religiously  preserved  in  the  treasury  of 
Notre  Dame.  The  clergy  of  the  two  altars  took  up 
the  quarrel,  and  as  much  hostility  was  created  by  the 
rival  relics  of  St.  Denis  and  Paris  as  by  the  rival  pontiffs 
af  Avignon  and  Rome.  Thus  the  Church,  which  in 
earlier  times  had  been  a  bond  of  unity,  was  one  of  the 
16 


862 


FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 


chief  causes  of  dissension ;  and  the  result  in  a  few  years 
was  seen  in  the  attempt  made  by  France  to  shake  oif, 
as  much  as  possible,  the  supremacy  of  both  the  divided 
Popes,  as  it  managed  to  shake  off  entirely  the  yoke  of 
the  divided  nobility. 

Quarrels  and  reconciliations  among  the  princes,  feasts 
and  festivals  among  the  peerage,  and  the  most  relentless 
treatment  of  the  citizens,  were  the  distinguishing  marks 
of  the  opening  of  this  century.  Isabella  of  Bavaria, 
the  shameless  wife  of  the  hapless  Charles,  added  a  great 
feature  of  infamy  to  the  state  of  manners  at  the  time, 
by  the  openness  of  her  profligacy,  and  her  neglect  of  all 
the  duties  of  wife  and  queen.  Eioting  with  the  thought- 
less Orleans,  while  her  husband  was  left  to  the  misery 
of  his  situation,  unwashed,  unshorn,  and  clothed  in  rags 
and  filth,  the  abandoned  woman  roused  every  manly 
heart  in  all  the  land  against  the  cause  she  aided.  Eely- 
ing  on  this  national  disgust,  the  wily  Burgundian  waited 
his  opportunity,  and  revenged  his  private  wrongs  by 
what  he  afterwards  called  the  jDatriotic  dagger  of  an 
,,^^  assassin.     On  the  niffht  of  the  23d  of  December, 

A.D.  1407.  ^  ' 

1407,  the  gay  and  handsome  Louis  was  lured  by 
a  false  message  from  the  queen's  quarters  to  a  distant 
part  of  the  town,  and  was  walking  in  his  satin  mantle, 
twirling  his  glove  in  his  hand,  and  humming  the  burden 
of  a  song,  when  he  was  set  on  by  ten  or  twelve  of  the 
adherents  of  his  enemy,  stabbed,  and  beaten  long  after 
he  lay  dead  on  the  pavement,  and  was  then  left  motion- 
less and  uncared-for  under  the  shade  of  the  high  house- 
walls  of  the  Yieille  Eue  du  Temple. 

Public  conscience  w^as  not  very  acute  at  that  time; 
Rnd,  although  no  man  for  a  moment  doubted  the  hand 
that  had  guided  the  blow,  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  was 
allowed  to  attend  the  funeral  of  his  murdered  cousin. 
and  to  hold  the  pall  in  the  procession,  and  to  weep 


JEAX   SANS-PEUR.  868 

louder  than  any  as  the  coffin  was  lowered  into  the  vault 
But  the  common  feelings  of  humanity  were  roused  at 
last.  People  remembered  the  handsome,  kindly,  merry- 
hearted  Orleans  thus  suddenly  struck  low,  and  tho 
ominous  looks  of  the  Parisians  warned  the  powerful 
Burgundy  that  it  was  time  to  take  his  hypocrisy  and 
his  tears  out  of  the  sight  of  honest  men.  He  slipped 
out  of  the  city,  and  betook  himself  to  his  Flemish 
states.  But  the  helm  was  now  without  a  steersman; 
and,  while  all  were  looking  for  a  guide  out  of  the  con- 
fusion into  which  the  appalling  incident  had  brought 
the  realm,  the  guilty  duke  himself,  armed  cap-d-pie,  and 
surrounded  by  a  body-guard  which  silenced  all  opposi- 
tion, made  his  solemn  entry  into  the  town,  and  fixed  on 
the  door  of  his  hotel  the  emblematic  ornament  of  two 
spears,  one  sharp  at  the  point  as  if  for  immediate  battle, 
and  one  blunted  and  guarded  as  if  for  a  friendly  joust. 
Eloquence  is  never  long  absent  when  power  is  in  want 
of  an  oration.  A  great  meeting  was  held,  in  which,  by 
many  brilliant  arguments  and  incontrovertible  examples 
from  holy  writ  and  other  histories,  John  Petit  proved,  to 
the  entire  satisfaction  of  everybody  who  did  not  wish 
to  be  slaughtered  on  the  spot,  that  the  doing  to  death 
of  the  Duke  of  Orleans  was  a  good  deed,  and  that  the 
doer  was  entitled  to  the  thanks  of  a  grateful  country. 
The  thanks  were  accordingly  given,  and  the  murderer 
was  at  the  height  of  his  ambition.  As  a  warning  to 
the  worthy  citizens  of  what  th'ey  had  to  expect  if  they 
rebelled  against  his  authority,  he  took  the  opportunity 
ot  hurrying  northward  to  his  states,  where  the  men  of 
Liege  were  in  revolt,  and,  having  broken  their  ill-formed 
squares,  committed  such  slaughter  upon  them  as  only 
the  madness  of  fear  and  hatred  could  have  suggested. 
Dripping  with  the  blood  of  twenty-four  thousand  arti- 
fUXUB,  he  returned   to   Paris,  where   the   citizens  were 


564  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 

hushed  into  silence,  and  perhaps  admiration,  by  the 
terrors  of  his  appearance.  They  called  him  John  tlie 
Fearless, — a  noble  title,  most  inadequately  acquired; 
but,  in  spite  of  their  flattery  and  their  submission,  he 
did  not  feel  secure  without  the  presence  of  his  faithful 
subjects.  He  therefore  summoned  his  Flemings  and 
Burgundians  to  share  his  triumphs,  and  a  loose  was 
given  to  all  their  desires.  They  pillaged,  burned,  and 
destroyed  as  if  in  an  enemy^s  country,  encamping  out- 
side the  walls,  and  giving  evident  indications  of  an  in- 
tention to  force  their  way  into  the  streets.  But  the  sight 
of  gore,  though  terrifying  at  first,  sets  the  tamest  of 
animals  wild.  The  Parisians  smelt  the  bloody  odour 
and  made  ready  for  the  fray.  The  formidable  incorpo- 
ration of  the  Butchers  rose  knife  in  hand,  and  at  the 
command  of  their  governor  prepared  to  preserve  the 
peace  of  the  city.  Burgundians  and  Orleanists  were 
equally  to  be  feared,  and  by  a  curious  coincidence  both 
those  parties  were  at  the  gate ;  for  the  Count  of  Arma- 
gnac,  father-in-law  of  the  orphan  Duke  of  Orleans,  had 
assumed  the  leadership  of  the  party,  and  had  come  up 
to  Paris  at  the  head  of  his  infuriated  Gascons  and  the 
men  of  Languedoc.  North  and  South  were  again 
ranged  in  hostile  ranks,  and  inside  the  walls  there  was  a 
reign  of  terror  and  an  amount  of  misery  never  equalled 
till  that  second  reign  of  terror  which  is  still  the  darkest 
spot  in  the  memory  of  old  men  yet  alive.  No  man 
could  put  faith  in  his  Neighbour.  The  murder  of  the 
Duke  of  Orleans  had  dissolved  all  confidence  in  the 
word  of  princes.  One  half  of  France  was  ready  to 
draw  against  the  other.  Each  half  was  anxious  for 
support,  from  whatever  quarter  it  came,  and  to  gain  the 
destruction  of  their  rivals  would  sacrifice  the  interests 
of  the  nation. 
But  the  same  spirit  of  disunion  and  extirpation  of 


FIRST   LAW  AGAINST   HERETICS.  365 

ancient  landmarks  was  at  work  in  England.  The  acces- 
sion of  Henry  the  Fourth  was  not  effected  without  the 
opposition  of  the  adherents  of  the  former  king  and  of 
the  supporters,  on  general  principles,  of  the  legitimate 
line.  There  were  treasons,  and  plots,  and  pitiless  exe 
cutions.  The  feudal  chiefs  were  no  longer  the  compact 
body  which  could  give  laws  both  to  King  and  Parlia- 
ment, but  ranged  themselves  in  opposite  camps  and 
waited  for  the  spoils  of  the  vanquished  side.  The 
clergy  unanimously  came  to  the  aid  of  the  usurper  on 
his  faithful  promise  to  exempt  them  from  taxation ;  and, 
by  thus  throwing  their  own  proportion  of  the  public 
burdens  on  the  body  of  the  people,  they  sundered  the 
alliance  which  had  always  hitherto  subsisted  between 
the  Church  and  the  lower  class.  Another  bribe  was 
held  out  to  the  clerical  order  for  its  support  to  the 
,,„,   unlineal  crown  by  the  surrender  to  their  ven- 

A.D.  1401.  "^ 

geance  of  any  heretics  they  could  discover.  In 
the  second  year  of  this  reign,  accordingly,  we  find  a  law 
enabling  the  priests  to  burn,  "  on  some  high  and  con- 
spicuous piece  of  ground,"  any  who  dissented  from  their 
faith.  This  is  the  first  legal  sanction  in  England  to  the 
logic  of  flame  and  fagot.  How  dreadfully  this  permis- 
sion was  used,  we  shall  see  ere  many  years  elapse.  In 
the  mean  time,  it  is  worth  while  to  remark  that  in  pro- 
portion as  the  Church  lost  in  popularity  and  affection  it 
gained  in  legal  privilege.  While  it  was  strong  it  did 
not  need  to  be  cruel ;  and  if  it  bad  continued  its  care  of 
the  poor  and  helpless,  it  would  have  been  able  to  leave 
Wickliff  to  his  dissertations  on  its  doctrinal  errors  un- 
disturbed.  A  Church  which  is  found  to  be  nationally 
beneficial,  and  which  endears  itself  to  its  adherents  by 
the  practical  graces  of  Christianity,  will  never  be  over- 
thrown, or  even  weakened,  by  any  theoretical  defects  in 
its  creeds  or  formularies.     It  was  perhaps,  therefore,  a 


566 


FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 


fortunate  circumstance  that  the  Church  of  Rome  had 
departed  as  much  by  this  time  from  the  path  of  honesty 
and  usefulness  as  from  the  simplicity  of  gospel  truth 
The  Bible  might  have  been  looked  at  in  vain,  even  in 
Wickliff's  translation,  if  its  meanings  had  not  been 
rendered  plain  by  the  lives  and  principles  of  the  clergy. 
Henry  the  Fifth,  feeling  the  same  necessity  of  clerical 
support  which  had  thrown  his  father  into  the  hands  of 
the  Church,  left  nothing  untried  to  attach  it  to  his  cause. 
All  the  opposition  which  had  been  offered  to  its  claims 
had  hitherto  been  confined  to  men  of  low  rank,  and 
generally  to  members  of  its  own  body.  Wickliff  him- 
self had  been  but  a  country  vicar,  and  had  been  un- 
noticed and  despised  in  his  small  parsonage  at  Lutter- 
worth. But  three-and-twenty  years  after  he  was  dead, 
his  name  was  celebrated  far  and  wide  as  the  enemy  of 
constituted  authority  and  a  heretic  of  the  most  dan- 
gerous kind.  His  guilt  consisted  in  nothing  whatever 
but  in  having  translated  the  Bible  into  English;  but  the 
fact  of  his  having  done  so  was  patent  to  all.  'No  wit- 
nesses were  required.  The  bones  of  the  old  man  were 
dug  up  from  their  resting-place  in  the  quiet  churchyard 
in  Leicestershire,  carried  ignominiously  to  Oxford,  and 
burned  amid  the  howls  and  acclamations  of  an  infuriated 
mob  of  priests  and  doctors.  This  was  in  1409.  But,  in 
his  character  of  heretic  and  unbeliever,  Wickliff  had 
high  associates  in  this  same  year;  for  the  General 
Council  sitting  at  Pisa  declared  the  two  Popes — of 
Avignon  and  Eome — ^who  still  continued  to  divide  the 
Christian  world,  to  be  "  heretics,  perjurers,  and  schisma- 
tics." 

Europe,  indeed,  was  ripe  for  change  in  almost  all  the 
relations  both  of  Church  and  State.  There  would  seem 
no  close  connection  between  Bohemia  and  England;  yet 
in  a  very  short  time  the  doctrines  of  Wickliff  penetrated 


LORD   COBHAM   BURNT.  367 

to  Prague.  There  Huss  and  Jerome  preached  against 
the  enormities  and  contradictions  of  the  Eomish  system, 
and  bitterly  paid  for  their  presumption  in  the  fires  of 
Constance  before  many  years .  had  passed.  But  in 
England  the  effects  of  the  new  revelation  of  the  hidden 
gospel  had  been  stronger  than  even  at  Prague.  PubHc 
opinion,  however,  divided  itself  into  two  very  different 
channels ;  and  while  the  whole  nation  listened  with  open 
ear  to  the  denunciations  rising  everywhere  against  the 
corruption,  pride,  and  sensuality  of  the  priesthood,  it 
rushed  at  the  same  time  into  the  wildest  excesses  of 
cruelty  against  the  opponents  of  any  of  the  doctrinal 
errors  or  superstitious  beliefs  in  which  it  had  been 
brought  up.  In  the  same  year  in  which  several  persons 
were  burnt  in  Smithfield  as  supporters  of  Wickliff  and 
the  Bible,  the  Parliament  sent  up  addresses  to  the 
Crown,  advising  the  king  to  seize  the  temporalities  of 
the  Church,  and  to  apply  the  riches  wasted  on  luxurious 
monks  and  nuns  to  the  payment  of  his  soldiers.  Henry 
the  Fifth  adroitly  availed  himself  of  the  double  direction 
in  which  the  popular  feeling  ran.  He  gained  over  the 
priesthood  by  exterminating  the  opponents  of  their 
ceremonies  and  faith,  and  rewarded  himself  by  occasion- 
ally confiscating  the  revenues  of  a  dozen  or  two  of  the 
more  notorious  monasteries.  In  1417  a  heavier  sacrifice 
was  demanded  of  him  than  his  mere  presence  at  the 
burning  of  a  plebeian  heretic  like  John  Badby,  whoso 
execution  he  had  attended  at  Smithfield  in  1410.  He 
was  required  to  give  up  into  the  hands  of  the  Church 
the  great  and  noble  Oldcastle,  Lord  CobKam.  The 
Church,  as  if  to  mark  its  triumph,  did  not  examine  tfeo 
accused  on  any  point  connected  with  civil  or  political 
affairs.  It  questioned  him  solely  on  his  religious  beliefs ; 
and  as  it  found  him  unconvinced  of  the  necessity  of  con- 
fession to  a  priest,  of  pilgrimages  to  the  shrines  of  saints, 


S68 


FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 


of  the  worship  of  images,  and  of  the  doctrine  of  transub 
stantiation,  it  delivered  him  over  to  the  secular  arm,  and 
the  stout  old  soldier  was  taken  to  St.  Giles's-in-the-Fields, 
and  suspended,  by  an  iron  chain  round  his  body,  above  a 
fire,  to  die  by  the  slowest  and  most  painful  of  deaths 
But,  in  this  yielding  up  of  a  nobleman  to  the  vengeance 
of  the  priesthood,  Henry  had  a  double  motive :  he  terri- 
fied the  proudest  of  the  barons,  and  attached  to  himself 
the  other  bodies  in  the  State.  The  people  were  still 
profoundly  ignorant,  and  looked  on  the  innovators  as 
the  enemies  both  of  God  and  man.  And  nothing  but 
this  can  account  for  the  astonishing  spectacle  presented 
by  Europe  at  this  date.  The  Church  torn  by  contending 
factions — three  Popes  at  one  time — and  council  arrayed 
against  council;  every  nation  disgusted  with  its  own 
priesthood,  and  enthusiasm  bursting  out  in  the  general 
confusion  into  the  wildest  excesses  of  fanaticism  and 
vice, — and  yet  a  total  incapacity  in  any  country  of  de- 
vising means  of  amendment.  Great  efforts  were  made, 
by  wise  and  holy  men  within  the  Church  itself,  to  shake 
off  the  impediments  to  its  development  and  increase. 
Eeclamations  were  made,  more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger, 
against  the  universal  depravation  of  morals  and  beliefs. 
The  Popes  were  not  unmoved  with  these  complaints, 
and  gave  credence  to  the  forebodings  of  evil  which  rose 
from  every  heart.  Yet  the  network  of  custom,  the 
authority  of  tradition,  and  the  unchangeableness  of 
Roman  policy  marred  every  effort  at  self-reformation. 
An  opening  was  apparently  made  for  the  introduction 
of  improvement,  by  the  declaration  of  the  supremacy 
o^eneral  councils,  and  the  cessation  of  the  great  schism 
of  the  West  on  the  nomination  of  Martin  the 

A.©.  1429. 

Fifth  to  the  undisputed  chair.  But  the  force  of 
circumstances  was  irresistible.  Cardinals  who  approved 
of  the  declaration  while  members  of  the  council  repu 


BORGIA.  369 

dialed  its  acts  when,  by  good  fortune,  they  succeedea  to 
the  tiara ;  and  one  of  them  even  ventured  the  astound- 
ing statement  that  in  his  character  of  ^neas  Sylvius, 
and  approver  of  the  decree  of  Basle,  he  was  guilty  of 
damnable  sin,  but  was  possessed  of  immaculate  virtue  in 
the  character  of  Paul  the  Second.  It  was  obvious  tliat 
this  unnatural  state  of  tilings  could  not  last.  An  es- 
tablishment conscious  of  its  defects,  but  unable  to  throw 
them  off,  and  finally  forced  to  the  awful  necessity  of  de- 
fending them  by  the  foulest  and  most  unpardonable 
means,  might  have  read  the  inevitable  result  in  every 
page  of  history.  But  worse  remained  behind.  There 
sat  upon  the  chair  of  St.  Peter,  in  the  year  1492,  the 
most  depraved  and  wicked  of  mankind.  No  earthly 
ruler  had  equalled  him  in  profligacy  and  the  coarser 
vices  of  cruelty  and  oppression  since  the  death  of  the 
Eoman  Nero.  This  was  a  man  of  the  name  of  Borgia, 
who  fixed  his  infamous  mark  on  the  annals  of  the 
Papacy  as  Alexander  the  Sixth.  While  this  bloodthirsty 
ruffian  was  at  the  summit  of  sacerdotal  power — this 
poisoner  of  his  friends,  this  polluter  of  his  family  circle 
with  unimaginable  crimes — as  the  visible  representative 
upon  earth  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  what  hope  could 
there  be  of  amendment  in  the  lower  orders  of  the  clergy, 
or  continuance  of  men's  belief  in  the  popish  claims? 
Long  before  this,  in  1442,  the  falsehood  of  the  pretended 
donation  of  Constantine,  on  which  the  Popes  founded 
their  territorial  rights,  was  triumphantly  proved  by  the 
learned  Yalla;  and  at  the  end  of  the  century  the  reve- 
rence of  mankind  for  the  successor  of  the  Prince  of  the 
Apostles  was  exposed  to  a  trial  which  the  authenticity 
of  all  the  documents  in  the  world  could  not  have  suc- 
cessfully stood,  in  the  personal  conduct  of  the  Pope  and 
hw  familiars. 

While  this  was  the  general   state  of  Europe  in  the 


^'0  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 

fifteenth  century  as  regards  the  position  of  the  clergy, 
high  and  low,  the  Church,  in  all  countries,  threw  itsell 
on  the  protection  of  the  kings.  By  the  middle,  oi 
towards  the  end,  of  this  period,  there  was  no  othei 
patronage  to  which  they  could  have  recourse.  The 
nobility  in  France  and  England  were  practically  eradi- 
eated.  All  confidence  between  baron  and  baron  was  at 
an  end,  and  all  belief  in  knightly  faith  and  honour  in 
the  other  classes  of  the  people.  As  if  the  time  for  a  new 
state  of  society  was  arrived,  and  instruments  were  re- 
quired to  clear  the  way  for  the  approaching  form,  the 
nobility  and  gentry  of  England  first  were  effectual  in 
overthrowing  their  noble  brethren  in  France,  and  then, 
with  infuriate  bitterness,  turned  their  swords  upon  each 
other.  The  most  rememberable  general  characteristic 
of  this  century  is  the  consolidation  of  royal  power.  The 
king  becomes  despotic  because  the  great  nobility  is 
overthrown  and  the  Church  stripped  of  its  authority. 
Tired  of  hoping  for  aid  from  their  ancient  protector,  the 
lowest  classes  cast  their  eyes  of  helplessness  to  the 
throne  instead  of  to  the  crozier.  They  see  in  the  reign- 
ing sovereign  an  ideal  of  personified  Power.  All  other 
ideals  with  which  the  masses  of  the  people  have  deluded 
themselves  have  passed  away.  The  Church  is  stripped 
of  the  charm  which  its  lofty  claims  and  former  kindness 
gave  it.  It  is  detected  for  the  thing  it  is, — a  corpora- 
tion for  the  grinding  of  the  poor  and  the  support  of 
tyranny  and  wrong.  The  nobility  is  stripped  also  of  the 
glitter  which  covered  its  harsh  outlines  with  the  glow 
of  Christian  qualifications.  It  is  found  to  be  selfish, 
faithless,  untrustworthy,  and  divided  against  itself.  To 
the  king,  then,  as  the  last  refuge  of  the  unfortunate,  as 
the  embodied  State,  a  combination,  in  his  own  person, 
of  the  manly  virtues  of  the  knight  with  the  (christian 
tenderness  of  the  priest,  the  public  transfers  all  the 


SUDDEN   ENLIGHTENMENT.  371 

romantic  confidence  it  had  lavished  on  the  othei*  two. 
And,  as  if  to  prove  that  this  idea  came  to  its  complete- 
ness without  reference  to  the  actual  holder  of  sovereign 
authority,  we  find  that  in  France  the  first  really  despotic 
king  was  Louis  the  Eleventh,  and  in  England  the  first 
king  by  divine  right  was  Henry  the  Seventh.  Two 
more  unchivalrous  personages  never  disgraced  the  three- 
legged  stool  of  a  scrivener.  Yet  they  sat  almost  simul- 
taneously on  two  of  earth's  proudest  thrones. 

No  century  had  ever  witnessed  so  great  a  change  in 
manners  and  position  as  this.  In  others  wo  have  seen 
a  gradual  widening-out  of  thought  and  tendencies,  all, 
however,  subdued  by  the  universal  shadow  in  which 
every  thing  was  carried  on.  But  in  this  the  progress 
was  by  a  sudden  leap  from  darkness  into  light.  In 
ancient  times  Europe  was  held  together  by  certain 
communities  of  interest  and  feeling,  of  which  the  chief 
undoubtedly  was  the  centralization  of  the  spiritual 
power  in  Eome.  At  the  Papal  Court  all  the  nations 
were  represented,  and  Stockholm  and  Saragossa  were 
brought  into  contact  by  their  common  dependence  on 
the  successor  of  St.  Peter.  The  courtly  festivals  which 
invited  a  knight  of  Scotland  to  cross  blunted  spears  in 
a  glittering  tournament  with  a  knight  of  Sicily  in  the 
court  of  an  emperor  of  Germany  was  another  bond  of 
union  between  remotest  regions;  and  in  the  fourteenth 
century  the  indefatigable  Froissart,  as  we  remarked, 
conveyed  a  knowledge  of  one  nation  to  another  in  the 
entertaining  chapters  with  which  he  delighted  the 
listeners  in  the  different  palaces  where  he  set  up  his 
rest.  But  all  these  lights,  it  will  be  observed,  illumined 
only  the  hill-tops,  and  left  the  valleys  still  obscxire. 
Ambitious  Churchmen  encountered  their  brethren  of  all 
kindreds  and  tongues  in  the  court  of  the  Vatican  j  tilt- 
ings  were  only  for  the  high-born  and  rich,  and  Froissart 


572 


FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 


himself  poured  forth  his  treasures  only  for  the  delight 
of  lords  and  ladies.  The  ballads  of  the  common  people, 
on  the  other  hand,  had  had  a  strongly  disuniting  effect. 
The  songs  which  charmed  the  peasant  were  directed 
against  the  exacting  priest  and  oppressive  noble.  In 
England  they  were  generally  pointed  against  the  Nor- 
man baron,  with  whose  harshness  and  pride  were  con- 
trasted the  kindness  and  liberality  of  Eobin  Hood  and 
his  peers.  The  French  ballads  were  hostile  to  the 
English  invader ;  the  Scottish  poems  were  commemora- 
tive of  the  heroism  of  Wallace  and  the  cruelties  of  the 
Southern  hordes.  Literatures  were  thus  condemned  to 
be  hostile,  because  they  were  not  lofty  enough  to  over- 
look the  boundaries  of  the  narrow  circles  in  which  they 
moved.  B^^  slow  and  toilsome  process  books  were  mul- 
tiplied,— carefully  copied  in  legible  hand,  and  then 
chained  up,  like  inestimable  jewels,  in  monastery  or 
palace,  as  too  valuable  to  be  left  at  large.  A  king's 
library  was  talked  of  as  a  wonder  when  it  contained 
six  or  seven  hundred  volumes.  The  writings  of  contro- 
versialists were  passed  from  hand  to  hand,  and  the  pub- 
lication of  a  volume  was  generally  achieved  by  its  being 
read  aloud  at  the  refectory -table  of  the  college  and  then 
discussed,  in  angry  disputations,  in  the  University  Hall. 
Not  one  man  in  five  hundred  could  read,  if  the  book  had 
been  written  in  the  plainest  text;  and  at  length  the 
running  hand  was  so  indistinct  as  to  be  not  much  plamer 
than  hieroglyphics.  The  discoveries,  therefore,  of  one 
age  had  all  to  be  discovered  over  again  in  the  next. 
Roger  Bacon,  the  English  monk,  in  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury, was  acquainted  with  gunpowder,  and  had  clear  in- 
timations of  many  of  the  other  inventions  of  more  recent 
times.  But  what  was  the  use  of  all  his  genius  ?  He 
could  only  write  down  his  triumph  in  a  book ;  the  book 
vas  carefully  arranged  on  the  shelf  of  his  monastery ; 


DISCOVERY  OF  PRINTING.  ^78 

«lever  men  of  his  own  society  may  have  carried  the 
report  of  his  doings  to  the  neighbouring  establishments  j 
but  time  passed  on,  those  clever  men  died  out,  the  book 
on  the  monastery-shelf  was  gradually  covered  with  dust, 
and  Eoger  Bacon  became  a  conjurer  in  popular  estima- 
tion, who  foretold  future  events  and  took  counsel  from 
a  supernatural  brazen  head.  But  in  this  century  the 
art  of  printing  was  discovered  and  perfected.  A  thou- 
sand copies  now  darted  off  in  all  directions,  cheap 
enough  to  be  bought  by  the  classes  below  the  highest j 
portable  enough  to  be  carried  about  the  person  to  the 
most  distant  lands,  and  in  a  typo  so  large  and  clear  that 
a  very  little  instruction  would  enable  the  most  illiterate 
to  master  its  contents.  Here  was  the  lever  that  lifted 
the  century  at  its  first  appearance  into  the  light  of 
modern  civilization.  And  it  came  at  the  very  nick  of 
time.  Men's  minds  were  disturbed  on  many  subjects; 
for  old  unreasoning  obedience  to  authority  had  passed 
away.  Who  was  to  guide  them  in  their  future  voyage  ? 
Isolated  works  would  no  longer  be  of  any  use.  Great 
scholars  and  acute  dialecticians  had  been  tried  and 
found  wanting.  They  only  acted  on  the  highly-educated 
class  J  and  now  it  was  the  people  in  mass — the  worker, 
the  shopkeeper,  the  farmer,  the  merchant — who  were 
anxious  to  be  informed ;  and  what  could  a  monk  in  a 
cell,  or  even  Chaucer  with  his  harp  in  hand,  do  for  the 
edification  of  such  a  countless  host  ?  People  would  no 
longer  be  fed  on  the  dry  crust  of  Aristotelianism  or  be 
satisfied  with  the  intellectual  jugglery  of  the  Schoolmen. 
Home  had  lost  its  guiding  hand,  and  its  restraining  sword 
was  also  found  of  no  avail.  Some  rest  was  to  be  found 
for  the  minds  which  had  felt  the  old  foundation  slip 
away  from  them ;  and  in  this  century,  thus  pining  for 
Ught,  thus  thrusting  forward  eager  hands  to  be  warmed 


S74 


FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 


at  the  first  ray  of  a  new-risen  sun,  there  were  terrible 
displays  of  the  aberrations  of  zeal  without  knowledge. 

Almost  within  hearing  of  the  firot  motion  of  the  press, 
incalculable  numbers  of  enthusiasts  revived  the  exploded 
sect  of  the  Flagellants  of  former  centuries,  and  peram- 
bulated Europe,  plying  the  whip  upon  their  naked  backs 
and  declaring  that  the  whole  of  religion  consisted  in  the 
use  of  the  scourge.  Others,  more  crazy  still,  pronounced 
the  use  of  clothes  to  be  evidence  of  an  unconverted 
nature,  and  returned  to  the  nakedness  of  our  first 
parents  as  proof  of  their  restoration  to  a  state  of  inno- 
cence. Mortality  lost  all  its  terrors  in  this  earnest 
search  for  something  more  than  the  ordinary  ministra- 
tions  of  the  faith  could  bestow;  anid  in  France  and 
England  the  hideous  spectacles  called  the  Dance  of 
Death  were  frequent.  In  these,  under  the  banner  of  a 
grinning  skeleton,  the  population  danced  with  frantic 
violence,  shouting,  shrieking,  in  the  exultation  of  the 
time, — a  scene  where  the  joyous  appearance  of  the  oc- 
cupation contrasted  shockingly  with  the  awful  place  in 
which  the  orgies  were  held,  for  the  catacombs  of  Paris, 
filled  with  the  bones  and  carcasses  of  many  generations, 
were  the  chosen  site  for  these  frightful  exhibitions.  Like 
the  unnatural  gayety  that  reigned  in  the  same  city 
when  the  guillotine  had  filled  every  family  with  terror 
or  grief,  they  were  but  an  abnormal  development  of  the 
sentiment  of  despair.  People  danced  the  Dance  of 
Death,  because  life  had  lost  its  charm.  Life  had  lost  its 
security  in  the  two  most  powerful  nations  of  the  time. 
England  was  shaken  with  contending  factions,  and 
France  exhausted  and  hopeless  of  restoration.  Tho 
peasantry  in  both  were  trampled  on  without  re- 
morse.  Jack  Cade  led  up  his  famishing  thou- 
sands to  lay  their  sufferings  before  the  throne.  They 
asked  for  nothing  but  a  slight  relaxation  of  the  burdens 


UNSETTLED   STATE   OF   EUROPE.  378 

that  Ofjprcssed  them,  and  were  condemned  without 
mercy  to  the  sword  and  gallows.  The  French  "  Jacques 
Bonhomme"  was  even  in  a  worse  condition.  There  was 
no  controlling  power  on  the  throne  to  guard  him  from 
the  tyi-annies  of  a  hundred  petty  superiors.  The  Church 
of  his  country  was  as  much  conquered  by  the  Church 
of  England  as  its  soil  by  the  English  arms.  A  cardinal, 
bloated  and  bloody,  dominated  both  London  and  Paris, 
and  sent  his  commands  from  the  Palace  at  Winchester, 
which  were  obeyed  by  both  nations.     And  all  this  on 

the  very  eve  of  the   introduction   of  the  per- 

^  ■  fected  printing-press,  the  birth  of  Luther,  and 

1492*  ^^^  discovery  of  America  !   From  the  beginning 

of  the  century  till  government  became  assured 
by  the  accession  of  Henry  YII.  and  Louis  XL,  the  whole 
of  Europe  was  unsettled  and  apparently  on  the  verge 
of  dissolution.  In  the  absence  of  the  controlling  power 
of  the  Sovereign,  each  little  baron  asserted  his  own 
right  and  privileges,  and  aimed  perhaps  at  the  restora- 
tion of  his  feudal  independence,  when  the  spirit  of  feu- 
dalism had  passed  away.  The  nobility,  even  if  it  had 
been  united,  was  not  now  numerous  enough  to  present 
a  ruling  body  to  the  State.  It  became  despised  as  soon 
as  it  was  seen  to  be  powerless;  and  at  last,  in  sheer  ex- 
haustion, the  people,  the  churches,  and  the  peerage  of 
the  two  proudest  nations  in  the  world  lay  down  help- 
less and  unresisting  at  the  footstool  of  the  only  authority 
likely  to  protect  them  from  each  other  or  themselves. 
When  we  think  of  the  fifteenth  century,  let  us  remember 
it  as  the  period  when  mankind  grew  tired  of  the  esta- 
olishments  of  all  former  ages,  when  feudalism  resigned 
its  sword  into  the  hands  of  monarchy,  and  when  the 
laet  days  of  the  expiring  state  of  society  were  distin- 
guished by  the  withdrawal  of  the  death-grasp  by  France 
and  England  from  each  other's  throats,  and  the  esta^ 


576 


FIFTEENTH    CENTURY. 


blishinent  of  respectful  if  not  friendly  sentimcQts  ba 
tween  them.  By  the  year  1451,  there  was  not  one  of 
all  the  conquests  of  the  Edwards  and  Henrys  left  to  the 
English  except  Calais.  If  that  miserable  relic  had  also 
been  restored,  it  would  have  prevented  many  a  heart- 
burning between  the  nations,  and  advanced,  perhaps  by 
centuries,  the  happy  time  when  each  can  look  across 
the  naiTOW  channel  which  divides  them  without  a  wish 
save  for  the  glor}^  and  prosperity  of  the  other. 

It  is  like  going  back  to  the  time  of  the  Crusades  to 
turn  our  eyes  from  the  end  of  this  century  to  the 
beginning,  so  great  and  essential  is  the  change  that  has 
taken  place.  Yet  it  is  necessary,  having  given  the 
general  view  of  the  condition  of  affairs,  to  descend  to 
certain  particulars  by  which  the  progress  of  the  history 
may  be  more  vividly  defined.  And  of  these  the  princi- 
pal are  the  battle  of  Agincourt,  the  relief  of  Orleans, 
the  invention  of  Guttenberg,  and  the  achievement  of 
Columbus.  These  are  fixed  on,  not  for  their  own  in- 
trinsic merits,  but  for  the  great  results  they  produced. 
Agincourt  unfeudalized  France ;  Joan  of  Arc  restored 
man's  faith  in  human  virtue  and  divine  superintendence; 
printing  preserved  forever  the  conquests  of  the  human 
intellect;  and  the  discovery  of  America  opened  a  new 
world  to  the  energies  of  mankind. 

We  must  return  to  the  state  of  France  when  the  Duke 
of  Orleans  was  so  treacherously  slain  by  the  ferocious 
Duke  of  Burgundy  in  1407.  For  a  time  the  crime  was 
successful  in  establishing  the  murderer's  power,  and  the 
Burgundians  were  strengthened  by  obtaining  the  custody 
of  the  imbecile  king,  Charles  the  Sixth,  and  the  support 
of  his  infamous  consort,  Isabeau  of  Bavaria.  But  author- 
ity BO  obtained  could  not  be  kept  without  plunging  into 
greater  excesses.  So  the  populace  were  let  loose,  and 
no  man's  life  was  safe.     In  self-defence — burning  with 


CONDITION   OP   FRANCE.  377 

/jatred  of  the  slayer  of  his  son-in-law  and  betrayer  of 
his  country — the  Count  of  Armagnac  denounced  the 
dominant  party.  Burgundy  threw  himself  into 
*  the  arms  of  England,  and  was  only  outbidden 
in  his  offers  of  submission  by  the  Armagnacs  in  the  Ibl- 
lowing  year.  Each  party  in  turn  promised  to  support 
the  English  king  in  all  his  claims,  and  before  he  set  foot 
in  France  he  already  found  himself  in  possession  of  the 
kingdom.  Many  strong  places  in  the  South 
were  surrendered  to  him  as  pledges  of  the 
fidelity  of  his  supporters.  The  whole  land  was  the  prey 
of  faction  and  party  hate.  The  Church  had  repudiated 
both  Pope  and  Council ;  the  towns  were  in  insurrection 
in  every  street ;  and  Henry  the  Fifth  was  only  twenty- 
six  years  of  age,  full  of  courage  and  ambition,  supported 
by  the  love  and  gratitude  of  the  national  Church,  and 
anxious  to  glorify  the  usurpation  of  his  family  by  a  re- 
storation of  the  triumphs  of  Cressy  and  Poictiers.  Ho 
therefore  sent  an  embassy  to  France,  demanding  his  re- 
cognition by  all  the  States  as  king,  though  he  modestly 
waived  the  royal  title  till  its  present  holder  should  be 
no  more.  He  declared  also  that  he  would  not  be  content 
without  the  hand  of  Catharine,  the  French  king's  daugh- 
ter, with  Normandy  and  other  counties  for  her  dowry; 
and  when  these  reasonable  conditions,  as  he  had  antici- 
pated, were  rejected,  and  all  his  preparations  were 
completed,  he  threw  off  the  mask  of  negotiation,  and 
sailed  from  Southampton  with  an  army  of  six  thousand 
men-at-arms  and  twenty-four  thousand  archers.  A 
beautiful  sight  it  must  have  been  that  day  in  Septem- 
ber, 1415,  when  the  enormous  convoy  sailed  or  rowed 
down  the  placid  Southampton  water.  Sails  of  various 
colours,  and  streamers  waving  from  every  mast,  must 
have  given  it  the  appearance  of  an  immense  regatta; 
and  while  all  France  was  on  the  watch  for  the  point  of 


578  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 

attack,  and  Calais  was  universally  regarded  as  the 
natural  landing-place  for  an  English  army,  the  great 
flotilla  pursued  its  course  past  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and 
struck  out  for  the  opposite  coast,  filling  up  the  mouth 
of  the  Seine  with  innumerable  vessels,  and  casting 
anchor  off  the  town  of  Harfleur.  Prayers  for  its  suc- 
cess ascended  from  every  parish  in  England;  for  the 
clergy  looked  on  the  youthful  king  as  their  champion 
againsi  dll  their  enemies, — against  the  Pope,  who  claimed 
their  tithes,  against  the  itinerant  monks,  who  denied 
and  resisted  their  authority,  and  against  the  nobles, 
who  envied  them  their  wealth  and  territories.  And  no 
wonder;  for  at  this  time  the  ecclesiastical  possessions 
included  more  than  the  half  of  England.  Of  fifty- three 
thousand  knightly  holdings  on  the  Rational  register, 
twenty-eight  thousand  belonged  to  mother  Church  I 
Prayers  also  for  its  success  were  uttered  in  the  work- 
shops and  markets.  People  were  tired  of  the  long  in- 
action of  Eichard  the  Second's  time,  and  longed  for  the 
stirring  incidents  they  had  heard  their  fathers  speak  of 
when  the  Black  Prince  was  making  the  "  Mounseers'^ 
fly.  For  by  this  time  a  stout  feeling  of  mutual  hatred 
had  given  vigour  to  the  quarrel  between  the  nations. 
Parliament  had  voted  unexampled  supplies,  and  "  all  the 
youth  of  England  was  afire." 

Meantime  the  siege  of  Harfleur  dragged  its  slow 
length  along.  Succours  were  expected  by  the  gallant 
garrison,  but  succour  never  came.  Proclamations  had 
indeed  been  issued,  summoning  the  han  and  arriere  ban 
of  France,  and  knights  were  assembling  from  all  quar- 
ters to  take  part  in  the  unavoidable  engagement.  But 
the  counsels  at  head-quarters  were  divided.  The  masses 
of  the  people  were  not  hearty  in  the  cause,  and  the 
men  of  Harfleur,  at  the  end  of  the  fifth  week  of  their 
resistADce,  sent  to  say  they  would  surrender  "if  they 


CAPTURE   OF   HARFLEUK.  379 

were  not  relieved  bj  a  great  army  in  two  days."  "  Take 
four,"  said  Henry,  wishing  nothing  more  than  a  decisive 
action  under  the  very  walls.  But  the  time  rapidly 
passed,  and  Harfleur  was  once  more  an  English  town. 
Henry  might  look  round  and  triumph  in  the  possession 
of  streets  and  houses ;  but  that  was  all,  for  his  usual 
barbarity  had  banished  the  inhabitants.  The  richer 
citizens  were  put  to  ransom;  all  the  rest  were  driven 
from  the  place, — not  quite  naked,  nor  quite  penniless, 
for  one  petticoat  was  left  to  each  woman,  and  one 
farthing  in  ready  money.  Generosity  to  the  vulgar 
vanquished  was  not  yet  understood,  either  as  a  Chris- 
tian duty  or  a  stroke  of  policy.  But  courage,  not  un- 
mixed with  braggadocio,  was  still  the  character  of  the 
time.  The  English  had  lost  many  men  from  sickness 
during  the  siege.  No  blow  had  been  boldly  struck  in 
open  field,  and  a  war  without  a  battle,  however  success- 
ful in  its  results,  would  have  been  thought  no  better 
than  a  toumaijient.  All  the  remaining  chivalry  of 
France  was  now  collected  under  its  chiefs  and  princes, 
and  Henry  determined  to  try  what  mettle  they  were  of. 
He  published  a  proclamation  that  he  and  his  English 
would  march  across  the  country  from  Harfleur  to  Calais 
in  spite  of  all  opposition ;  and,  as  the  expedition  would 
occupy  eight  days  at  least,  he  felt  sure  that  some  attempt 
would  be  made  to  revenge  so  cutting  an  insult.  He 
might  easily  have  sent  his  forces,  in  detachments,  by 
sea,  for  there  was  not  a  French  flag  upon  all  the  Channel; 
but  trumpets  were  sounded  one  day,  swords  drawn, 
cheers  no  doubt  heartily  uttered,  by  an  enthusiastic 
array  of  fifteen  thousand  men,  and  the  dangerous  march 
began.  It  was  the  month  of  October,  the  time  of  the 
vintage :  there  was  plenty  of  wine ;  and  a  French  author 
makes  the  characteristic  remark,  "  with  plenty  of  wine 
the  English  soldier  could  go  to  the  end  of  the  world,'' 


iso 


FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 


When  the  English  soldier,  on  this  occasion,  had  got 
through  the  eight  days'  provisions  with  which  he  started, 
instead  of  finding  himself  at  Calais,  he  was  only  ad- 
vanced as  far  as  Amiens,  with  the  worst  part  of  the 
journey  hefore  him.  The  fords  of  the  Somme  were 
said  to  he  guarded ;  spies  came  over  in  the  disguise  of 
deserters,  and  told  the  king  that  all  the  land  was  up  in 
arms,  that  the  princes  were  all  united,  and  that  two 
hundred  thousand  men  were  hemming  them  hopelessly 
round.  In  the  midst  of  these  bad  news,  however,  a  ray 
of  light  broke  in.  A  villager  pointed  out  a  marsh,  by 
crossing  which  they  could  reach  a  ford  in  the  stream. 
They  traversed  the  marsh  without  hesitation,  waded 
with  difficulty  through  morass  and  water,  and,  behold ! 
they  were  safe  on  the  other  side.  The  road  was  now 
clear,  they  thought,  for  Calais;  and  they  pushed  cheerily 
on.  But,  more  dangerous  than  the  marsh,  more  im- 
passable than  the  river,  the  vast  army  of  France  blocked 
up  their  way.  Closing  across  a  narrow  valley  which 
lay  between  the  castle  of  Agincourt  and  the  village  of 
Tramecourt,  sixty  thousand  knights,  gentlemen,  and 
men-at-arms  stood  like  a  wall  of  steel.  There  were  all 
the  great  names  there  of  all  the  provinces, — Dukes  of 
Lorraine,  and  Bar,  and  Bourbon,  Princes  of  Orleans 
and  Berri,  and  many  more.  Henry  by  this  time  had 
but  twelve  thousand  men.  He  found  he  had  miscalcu- 
lated his  movements,  and  was  unwilling  to  sacrifice  his 
army  to  the  point  of  honour.  He  ofi'ered  to  resign  the  title 
of  King  of  France  and  to  surrender  his  recent  conquest 
at  Harfleur.  But  the  princes  were  resolved  not  to  nego- 
tiate, but  to  revenge.  Henry  then  said  to  the  prisoners 
he  was  leading  in  his  train,  "Gentlemen,  go  till  this 
affair  is  settled.  If  your  captors  survive,  present  your- 
selves at  Calais."  His  forces  were  soon  arranged. 
Archers  had  ceased  to  be  the  mere  appendages  to  a  line 


AGINCOURT.  381 

of  battle :  they  now  constituted  almost  all  the  English 
army.  All  the  night  before  they  had  been  busy  in  pre- 
paration. They  had  furbished  up  their  arms,  and  put 
now  cords  to  their  bows,  and  sharpened  the  stakes  they 
carried  to  ward  off  the  attack  of  cavalry.  At  early 
dawn  they  had  confessed  to  the  priest;  and  all  the  time 
no  noise  had  been  heard.  Henry  had  ordered  silence 
throughout  the  camp  on  pain  of  the  severest  penalties, 
— ^loss  of  his  horse  to  a  gentleman,  and  of  his 
right  ear  to  a  common  soldier.  The  23d  of  Oc- 
tober was  the  great,  the  important  day.  Henry  put  a 
noble  helmet  on  his  head,  surmounted  by  a  golden 
crown,  sprang  on  his  little  gray  hackney,  encouraged 
his  men  with  a  few  manly  words,  reminding  them  of  Old 
England  and  how  constantly  they  had  conquered  the 
French,  and  led  them  to  a  field  where  the  gi-ass  was 
still  green,  and  which  the  rains  had  not  converted  into 
mud;  for  the  weather  had  long  been  unpropitious. 
And  here  the  heroic  little  army  expected  the  attack. 
But  the  enemy  were  in  no  condition  to  make  an  ad- 
vance. Seated  all  night  on  their  enormous  war-horses, 
the  heavy-armed  cavaliers  had  sunk  the  unfortunate 
animals  up  to  their  knees  in  the  adhesive  soil.  Old 
Thomas  of  Erpingham,  seeing  the  decisive  moment, 
completed  the  marshalling  of  the  English  as  soon  as 
possible,  and,  throwing  his  baton  in  the  air,  cried, 
"JSTow,  Strike  1"  A  great  hurrah  was  the  answer  to  this 
order;  but  still  the  French  line  continued  unmoved. 
If  it  had  been  turned  into  stone  it  could  not  have  been 
more  inactive.  Ranged  thirty-two  deep,  and  fixed  to 
the  spot  they  stood  on,  buried  up  in  armour,  and 
crowded  in  the  narrow  space,  the  knights  could  offer 
no  resistance  to  the  attack  of  their  nimble  and  lightly- 
armed  foes.  A  flight  of  ten  thousand  arrows  poured 
upon  the  vast  mass,  and  saddles  became  empty  with. 


382 


FIFTEENTH    CENTURY. 


out  a  blow.  There  came,  indeed,  two  great  charges  of 
horse  from  the  flank  of  the  French  array:  but  the  in 
evitable  shaft  found  entrance  through  their  coats  of 
mail,  and  very  few  survived.  Of  these  the  greater 
part  rushed,  blind  and  wounded,  back  among  theii 
own  men,  crashing  upon  the  still  spell-bound  line  and 
throwing  it  into  inextricable  confusion.  Horse  and  man 
rolled  over  in  the  dirt,  struggling  and  shrieking  in  an 
undistinguishable  mass.  Meanwhile  the  archers,  throw- 
ing aside  their  stakes  and  seizing  the  hatchets  hanging 
round  their  necks,  advanced  at  a  run, — ^poured  blows 
without  cessation  on  casque  and  shield,  completing  the 
destruction  among  the  crowded  multitudes  which  their 
own  disorder  had  begun ;  and,  as  the  same  cause  which 
hindered  their  advance  prevented  their  retreat,  they 
sat  the  hopeless  victims  of  a  false  position,  and  were 
slaughtered  without  an  attempt  made  to  resist  or  fly. 
The  fate  of  the  second  line  was  nearly  the  same.  Henry, 
forcing  his  wsty  with  sword  and  axe  through  the  living 
barrier  of  horse  and  cavalier,  led  his  compact  array  to 
the  glittering  body  beyond.  There  the  melee  became 
more  animated,  and  prowess  was  shown  upon  either 
side.  But  the  rear-guard,  warned  by  previous  expe- 
rience, took  flight  before  the  middle  lines  were  pierced, 
and  Henry  saw  himself  victor  with  very  trifling  loss, 
and  only  encumbered  with  the  number  of  the  slain,  and 
still  more  with  the  multitude  of  prisoners.  Almost  all 
the  surviving  noblemen  had  surrendered  their  swords. 
They  knew  too  well  the  fate  of  wounded  or  disarmed 
gentlemen  even  among  their  countrymen,  and  trusted 
rather  to  the  generosity  of  the  conqueror  than  the 
mercy  of  their  own  people.  Alas  that  we  must  again 
confess  that  Henry  was  ignorant  of  the  name  of  gene- 
rosity !  Alarmed  for  a  moment  at  the  threatening  as- 
pect of  some  of  the  fugitives  who  had  resumed  theb 


SLAUGHTER   OF   THE    FRENCH    NOBILITY. 


383 


ranks,  he  gave  the  j)itiless  word  that  every  prisoner  was 
to  be  slain.  Not  a  soldier  would  lift  his  hand  against 
his  captive, — from  the  double  motive  of  tenderness  and 
cupidity.  To  tell  an  "archer  good"  to  murder  a  great 
baron,  the  captive  of  his  bow  and  spear,  was  to  tell  him 
to  resign  a  ransom  which  would  make  him  rich  for  life. 
But  Henry  was  not  to  be  balked.  He  appointed  two 
hundred  men  to  be  executioners  of  his  command ;  and 
thousands  of  the  young  and  gay  were  slaughtered  in  cold 
blood.  Was  it  hideous  policy  which  thus  led  Henry  to 
weaken  his  enemy's  cause  by  diminishing  the  number 
of  its  knightly  defenders,  or  was  it  really  the  result  of 
the  fear  of  being  overcome  ?  "Whichever  it  was,  the 
effect  was  the  same.  Ten  thousand  of  the  gentlemen  of 
France  were  the  sufferers  on  that  day, — a  whole  gene- 
ration of  the  rich  and  high-born  swept  away  at  one 
blow !  It  would  have  taken  a  long  time  in  the  course 
of  nature  to  supply  their  place;  but  nature  was  not 
allowed  to  have  her  way.  Wars  and  dissensions  inter- 
fered with  her  restorative  efforts.  Six-and-thirty  years 
were  yet  to  be  spent  in  mutual  destruction,  or  in  strug- 
gles against  the  English  name;  and  when  France  was 
again  left  free  from  foreign  occupation,  when  French 
chivalry  again  wished  to  assume  the  chief  rule  in  human 
affairs,  it  was  found  that  chivalry  was  out  of  place ;  a 
new  state  of  things  had  arisen  in  Europe ;  the  greatest 
exploit  which  had  been  known  in  their  national  annals 
had  been  performed  by  a  woman ;  and  knighthood  had 
BO  lost  its  manliness  that,  when  prosperity  and  popula- 
tion had  again  made  France  a  powerful  kingdom,  the 
silk-clad  courtiers  of  an  un warlike  monarch  thought  it 
good  taste  to  sneer  at  the  relief  of  Orleans  and  the 
mission  of  Joan  of  Arc ! 

Six  years  after  Agincourt,  the  English  conqueror  and 
the  wretched  phantom  of  kingship  called  Charles  tho 


384  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Sixth  descended  to  their  graves.  Military 
*  honour  and  patriotism  seemed  utterly  at  an  end 
among  the  French  population,  and  our  Henry  the  Sixth, 
the  son  of  the  man  of  Agincourt,  succeeded  in  the  great 
object  of  English  ambition  and  was  recognised  from 
the  Channel  to  the  Loire  as  King  of  France.  In  the 
Southern  provinces  a  sj)ark  of  the  old  French  gallantry 
was  still  unextinguished,  but  it  showed  itself  in  the  gay 
unconcern  with  which  the  Dauphin,  now  Charles  the 
Seventh,  bore  all  the  reverses  of  fortune,  and  consoled 
himself  for  the  loss  of  the  noblest  crown  in  Europe  by 
the  enjoyments  of  love  and  festivity.  Perhaps  he  saw 
that  the  whirhgig  of  time  would  bring  about  its  re- 
venges, and  that  the  curse  of  envious  faction  would  vex 
the  councils  of  the  conquerors  as  it  had  ruined  the 
fortunes  of  the  subdued.  The  warriors  of  Henry  still 
remained,  but,  without  the  controlling  hand,  they  could 
direct  their  efforts  to  no  common  object.  The  uncles  of 
the  youthful  king  speedily  quarrelled.  The  gallant 
Bedford  was  opposed  by  the  treacherous  Glo'ster,  and 
both  were  dominated  and  supplanted  by  the  haughty 
prelate,  the  Cardinal  Bishop  of  Winchester.  Offence  was 
soon  taken  at  the  presumption  of  the  English  soldiery. 
Eeligious  animosities  supervened.  The  Churches  of 
England  and  France  had  both  made  successful  endeavours 
to  establish  a  considerable  amount  of  national  indepen- 
dence, and  the  French  bishops,  who  had  withdrawn 
themselves  from  the  absolutism  of  Eome,  were  little  in- 
clined to  become  subordinate  to  "Winchester  and  Canter- 
bury. A  court  gradually  gathered  round  the  Dauphin^ 
which  inspired  him  with  more  manly  thoughts.  His 
feasts  and  tournaments  were  suspended,  and,  with  his 
hand  on  the  hilt  of  his  sword,  he  watched  the  proceed- 
ings of  the  English.  These  proceedings  were  uniformly 
successful  when  restricted   to  the   operations  of  war 


SIEGE   OF   ORLEANS.  885 

They  defeated  the  men  of  Gascony  and  the  reinforce- 
ments sent  ovei  by  the  Scotch.  They  held  a  firm  grasp 
of  Paris  and  all  the  strong  places  of  the  North,  and 
cast  down  the  gauntlet  to  the  rest  of  France  by  laying 
siege  to  the  beautiful  city  of  Orleans  in  the 
winter  of  1428.  Once  in  possession  of  the  Loire, 
they  would  be  able  at  their  leisure  to  extend  their  con- 
quests southward;  and  all  the  loyal  throughout  the 
countiy  took  up  the  challenge  and  resolved  on  the 
defence  of  the  beleaguered  town.  The  English  must  have 
begun  by  this  time  to  despise  their  enemy ;  for,  in  spite 
of  the  greatness  of  the  stake,  they  undertook  the  siege 
with  a  force  of  less  than  three  thousand  men.  To  make 
up  for  the  deficiency  in  numbers,  they  raised  twelve 
large  bastions  all  round  the  walls,  exhausting  the  troops 
by  the  labour  and  finding  it  impossible  to  garrison 
them  adequately  when  they  were  finished.  It  seems 
that  Sebastopol  was  not  the  first  occasion  on  which  our 
soldiers  were  overworked.  To  surround  a  city  of  several 
thousand  inhabitants,  strongly  garrisoned,  and  with  an 
open  country  at  its  back  for  the  supply  of  provisions, 
would  have  required  a  large  and  well-directed  force. 
But  the  moral  effects  of  Agincourt,  and  ev6n  of  Cressy 
and  Poictiers,  were  not  yet  obliterated.  Public  spirit 
was  dead,  and  very  few  entertained  a  hope  of  saving 
the  doomed  place.  Statesmen,  politicians,  and  warriors, 
all  calculated  the  chances  of  success  and  decided  against 
the  cause  of  France.  But  in  the  true  heart  of  the 
common  people  far  better  feelings  survived.  They  were 
neither  statesmen,  nor  politicians,  nor  warriors;  but 
they  were  loyal  and  devoted  Frenchmen,  and  put  their 
trust  in  God. 

A  peasant-girl,  eighteen  years  of  age,  bom  and  bred 
In   a   little  village   called  Domremy,  in  Lorraine,  was 
femous  for  her  religious  faith  and  simplicity  of  charac* 
17 


S86 


FIFTEENTH    CENTURY. 


ter.  Her  name  was  Joan  d'Arc, — a  dreamy  enthiisiasi^ 
believing  with  full  heart  all  the  legends  of  saints  and 
miracles  with  which  the  neighbourhood  was  full.  She 
rested,  also,  with  a  sort  of  romantic  interest  on  the  per- 
sonal fortunes  of  the  young  discrowned  king,  who  had 
been  unjustly  excluded  by  foreigners  from  his  rights 
and  was  now  about  to  lose  the  best  of  his  remaining 
possessions.  She  walked  in  the  woods  and  heard  voices 
telling  her  to  be  up  and  doing.  She  went  to  pray  in  the 
dim  old  church,  and  had  glorious  visions  of  angels  who 
smiled  upon  her.  One  time  she  saw  a  presence  with  a 
countenance  like  the  sun,  and  wings  upon  his  shoulders, 
who  said,  "  Go,  Joan,  to  the  help  of  the  King  of  France." 
But  she  answered,  "  My  lord,  I  cannot  ride,  nor  com- 
mand men-at-arms."  The  voice  replied,  "Go  to  M.  de 
Baudricourt  at  Yaucouleurs:  he  will  take  thee  to  the 
king.  Saint  Catharine  and  Saint  Marguerite  will  come 
to  thy  assistance."  There  was  no  voluntary  deception 
here.  The  girl  lived  in  a  world  of  her  own,  and  peopled 
it  out  of  the  fulness  of  her  heart.  She  went  to  Yaucou- 
leurs :  she  saw  M.  de  Baudricourt.  He  took  her  to 
Poictiers,  where  the  Dauphin  resided,  and  when  she 
was  led  into  the  glittering  ring  an  attempt  was  made 
to  deceive  her  by  representing  another  as  the  prince ; 
but  she  went  straight  up  to  the  Dauphin  and  said  to 
him, "  Gentle  Dauphin,  my  name  is  Joan  the  Maid.  The 
King  of  Heaven  sends  to  you,  through  me,  that  you 
shall  be  anointed  and  crowned  at  Eheims,  and  you  shall 
be  lieutenant  of  the  King  of  Heaven,  who  is  King  of 
France."  All  the  court  was  moved, — the  more  pure- 
minded,  with  sympathy  for  the  girl,  the  more  expe- 
rienced, with  the  use  that  might  be  made  of  her  enthu- 
Biasm  to  rouse  the  nation.  Both  parties  conspired  to 
aid  Joan  in  her  design ;  and,  clothed  in  white  armour, 
mounted  on  a  war-horse,  holding  the  banner  of  Franco 


JOAN   OF  ARC.  387 

in  her  hand,  and  waited  on  by  knights  and  pages,  she 
set  forth  on  her  way  to  Orleans.  It  was  like  a  religious 
procession  all  the  way.  She  prayed  at  all  the  shrines 
and  was  blest  by  the  clergy,  and  held  on  her  path  un- 
dismayed with  all  the  dangers  that  occurred  at  every 
step.  At  length,  on  the  30th  of  April,  she  made  bar 
entry  into  Orleans.  Her  coming  had  long  been  ex- 
pected; and,  now  that  it  had  really  happened,  people 
looked  back  at  the  difficulties  of  the  route  and  thought 
the  whole  march  a  miracle.  Meantime  Joan  knelt  and 
gave  thanks  in  the  great  church,  and  the  true  defence 
of  Orleans  began.  Into  the  hard-pressed  city  had 
gathered  all  the  surviving  chivalry  of  France, — Dunois, 
the  bastard  of  Orleans,  La  Hire,  Saintrailles,  rough  and 
dissolute  soldiers,  yet  all  held  in  awe  by  the  purity  and 
innocence  of  the  Maid.  "With  Joan  at  the  head  of  the 
column  of  assault,  the  English  intrenchments  fell  one 
after  another.  In  spite  of  wounds  and  hardships,  the 
peasant-girl  pushed  fearlessly  on ;  the  knights  and  gen- 
tlemen could  not  decline  to  follow  where  she  led  tbe 
way ;  and  ten  days  after  her  arrival  old  Talbot  and  Fal- 
staff  gathered  up  the  fragments  of  their  troops  and 
made  a  precipitate  retreat  from  the  scehe  of  their  dis- 
comfiture. But  there  was  not  yet  rest  for  the  dreamer 
of  Domremy.  She  hurried  off  to  the  Dauphin.  "  Gentle 
Dauphin,"  she  said,  "  till  you  are  crowned  with  the  old 
crown  and  bedewed  with  the  holy  oil,  you  can  never 
be  King  of  France.  Come  with  me  to  Eheims.  There 
shall  no  enemy  hurt  you  on  the  way."  The  country 
through  which  they  had  to  pass  was  bristling  with 
English  castles  and  swarming  with  wandering  troops. 
Yet  the  counsel  which  appeared  so  hardy  was  in  fact 
the  wisest  that  could  be  given.  The  faith  in  the  sanc- 
tity of  coronations  was  still  strong.  Whoever  was  first 
crowned  would  in  the  eye  of  faith  be  tr"o  kin;,^     Win- 


888 


FIFTEENTH    CENTURY. 


Chester  was  bringing  over  the  English  claimant.  AU 
France  would  be  startled  at  the  news  that  the  de- 
Bcendant  of  St.  Louis  was  beforehand  with  his  rival; 
and  the  march  was  successfully  made.  "  Gentle  king," 
July  17,  83"!^  Joan,   kneeling  after    the   ceremony,   and 

1429.  calling  him  for  the  first  time  King, — "Gentle 
King,  Orleans  is  saved,  the  true  king  is  crowned.  My 
task  is  done.  Farewell.''  Eut  they  would  not  let  her 
leave  them  so  soon.  The  people  crowded  round  her  and 
blest  her  wherever  she  appeared.  "  Oh,  the  good  people 
of  Eheims  I"  she  cried :  "  when  I  die  I  should  like  to  be 
buried  here."  "  When  do  you  think  you  shall  die  ?"  in- 
quired the  archbishop, — ^perhaps  with  a  sneer  upon  his 
lips.  "That  I  know  not,"  she  replied:  "whenever  it 
pleases  God.  But,  for  my  own  part,  I  wish  to  go  back 
and  keep  the  sheep  with  my  sister  and  brothers.  They 
will  be  so  glad  to  see  me  again!"  But  this  was  not 
to  be. 

If  Talbot  and  Suffolk  had  been  foiled  and  vanquished 
by  Dunois  and  La  Hire,  they  would  have  accepted  their 
defeat  as  one  of  the  mischances  of  war.  A  knightly 
hand  ennobles  the  blow  it  gives.  But  to  be  humbled  by 
a  woman,  a  peasant,  a  prophetess,  an  impostor, — ^this 
was  too  much  for  the  proud  stomachs  of  our  steel-clad 
countrymen.  But  far  worse  was  it  in  the  eyes  of  our 
Btole-clad  ecclesiastics.  Apparitions  of  saints  and  angels 
vouchsafed  to  the  recalcitrant  Church  of  France! — 
voices  heard  from  heaven  denouncing  the  claims  of  the 
English  king ! — visible  glories  hanging  round  the  head 
of  a  simple  shepherdess !  It  was  evident  to  every  clergy- 
man and  monk  and  bishop  in  England  that  the  woman 
was  a  witch  or  a  deceiver.  And  almost  all  the  clergy- 
men in  France  thought  the  same;  and  after  a  while, 
when  the  exploit  was  looked  back  upon  with  calmness, 
ftlmost  all  the  soldiers  on  both  sides  were  of  the  same 


JOAN   SENTENCED   FOR   HERESY. 


38$ 


opinion.  Nobody  could  believe  in  the  exaltation  of  a 
pure  and  enthusiastic  mind,  making  its  own  visions,  and 
performing  its  own  miracles,  without  a  tincture  of  deceit 
It  was  easier  and  more  orthodox  to  believe  in  the  lique 
faction  of  the  holy  oil  and  the  wonders  wrought  by  the 
bones  of  St.  Denis :  so,  with  a  nearly  universal  assent 
of  both  the  parties,  the  humbled  English  and  delivered 
French,  the  most  heroic  and  most  feminine  of  women 
was  handed  over  to  the  Church  tribunals,  and  Joan'a 
fate  was  sealed.  Unmauly  priests,  whose  law  prevented 
them  from  having  wives,  unloving  bishops,  whose  law 
prevented  them  from  having  daughters, — ^how  were 
they  to  judge  of  the  loving  heart  and  trusting  tender- 
ness of  a  gii'l  not  twenty  years  of  age,  standing  before 
them,  with  modesty  not  shown  in  blushes  but  in  un- 
abated simplicity  of  behaviour,  telling  the  tale  of  all 
her  actions  as  if  she  were  pouring  it  into  the  ears  of 
father  and  mother  in  her  own  old  cottage  at  home,  un- 
conscious, or  at  least  regardless,  of  scowling  looks,  and 
misleading  questions,  directed  to  her  by  those  predeter- 
mined murderers  ?  No  one  tried  to  save  her.  Charles 
the  Seventh,  with  the  oil  of  Eheims  scarcely  dried  upon 
his  head,  made  no  attempt  to  get  her  from  the  hands  of 
her  enemies.  The  process  took  place  at  Eouen.  Magic 
and  heresy  were  the  crimes  laid  to  her  charge ;  and  as 
generosity  was  magic  in  the  eyes  of  those  narrow-souled 
inquisitors,  and  trust  in  God  was  heresy,  there  was  no 
defence  possible.  Her  whole  life  was  a  confession. 
First,  she  was  condemned  to  perpetual  imprisonment, 
and  to  resume  the  dress  of  her  sex.  Then  she  was  ex- 
posed to  every  obloquy  and  insult  which  l^atred  and 
superstition  could  pour  upon  her.  A  gallant  "Lord" 
accompanied  the  Count  de  Ligny  in  a  visit  to  her  cell. 
She  was  chained  to  a  plank  by  both  feet,  and  kept  in 
this  attitude  night  and  day.     The  noble  Englishman  did 


a90 


FIFTEENTH   CENTUKY. 


honour  to  his  rank  and  country.  When  Joan  said,  "  I 
know  the  English  will  procure  my  death,  in  hopes  of 
getting  the  realm  of  France;  but  they  could  not  do  it, 
no,  if  they  had  a  hundred  thousand  Goddams  more  than 
they  have  to-day ;"  the  gallant  visitor  was  so  enraged 
by  those  depreciating  remarks,  and  perhaps  at  the  nit k- 
name  thus  early  indicative  of  the  national  oath,  that  he 
drew  his  dagger,  and  would  have  struck  her,  if  he  had 
not  been  hindered  by  Lord  Warwick.  Another  gentle- 
man, on  being  admitted  to  her  prison,  insulted  her  by 
the  grossness  of  his  behaviour,  and  then  overwhelmed 
her  with  blows.  It  was  time  for  Joan  to  escape  her  tor- 
mentors. She  put  on  once  more  the  male  apparel 
which  she  had  thrown  off,  and  sentence  of  death  was 
passed.  On  the  30th  of  May,  1431,  in  the  old  fishmarket 
of  Eouen,  the  great  crime  was  consummated.  The 
flames  mounted  very  slowly;  and  when  at  last  they  en- 
veloped her  from  the  crowd,  she  was  still  heard  calling 
on  Jesus,  and  declaring,  "The  voices  I  heard 
were  of  God! — ^the  voices  I  heard  were  of 
God !"  The  age  of  chivalry  was  indeed  past,  and  the 
age  of  Church-domination  was  also  about  to  expire. 
The  peasant-girl  of  Domremy  wrote  the  dishonoured 
epitaph  of  the  first  in  the  flame  of  Eouen,  and  a  citizen 
of  Mentz  was  about  to  give  the  other  its  death-blow 
with  the  printing-press. 

This  is  one  of  the  inventions  apparently  unimportant, 
by  which  incalculable  results  have  been  produced.  At 
first  it  was  intended  merely  to  simplify  the  process  of 
copying  the  books  which  were  already  well  known. 
And,  if  we  may  trust  some  of  the  stories  told  of  the 
earliest  specimens  of  the  art,  we  shall  see  that  there 
was  some  slight  j)ortion  of  dishonesty  mingled  with  the 
talent  of  the  Fathers  of  printing.  These  were  Gutten 
oerg  of  Mentz,  and  his  apprentice  or  partner  Faust.   The 


PRINTING.  391 

first  of  their  productions  was  a  Latin  Bible ;  and  the 
,,.,  letters  of  this  impression  were  such  an  exact 
imitation  of  the  works  of  the  amanuensis  that 
they  passed  it  off  as  an  exquisite  specimen  of  the  copyist's 
art.  Faust  sold  a  copy  to  the  lOng  of  France  for  seveL 
hundred  crowns,  and  another  to  the  Archbishop  of  Paris 
for  four  hundred.  The  prelate,  enchanted  with  his  bar- 
gain, (for  the  usual  price  was  several  hundred  crowns 
above  what  he  had  given,)  showed  it  in  triumph  to  the 
king.  The  king  compared  the  two,  and  was  filled  with 
astonishment.  They  were  identical  in  every  stroke  and 
dot.  How  was  it  possible  for  any  two  scribes,  or  even 
for  the  same  scribe,  to  produce  so  undeniable  a  fac- 
simile of  his  work  ?  The  capital  letters  of  the  edition 
were  of  red  ink.  They  inquired  still  further,  and  found 
that  many  other  copies  had  been  sold,  all  precisely  aUke 
in  form  and  pressure.  They  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
Faust  was  a  wizard  and  had  sold  himself  to  the  devil, 
and  that  the  initials  were  of  blood.  The  Church  and 
State,  in  this  case  united  in  the  persons  of  king  and  arch- 
bishop, had  the  magician  apprehended.  To  save  himself 
from  the  flames,  the  unhappy  Faust  had  to  confess  the 
deceit,  and  also  to  discover  the  secret  of  the  art.  The 
whole  mystery  consisted  in  cutting  letters  upon  movable 
metal  types,  and,  after  rubbing  them  with  ink  when 
they  were  correctly  set,  imprinting  them  upon  paper 
by  means  of  a  screw.  A  simple  expedient,  as  it  ap- 
peared to  everybody  when  the  secret  was  spread  abroad; 
for  there  had  been  seals  stamping  impressions  on  wax 
for  many  generations.  Medals  and  coins  had  been 
poured  forth  from  the  dies  of  every  nation  from  the 
dawn  of  history.  In  England,  playing-cards  had  been 
produced  for  several  years,  with  the  figures  impressed 
on  them  from  wooden  blocks ;  and  in  1423  a  stamped 
book,  with  wood  engravings,  had  made  its  appearance, 


^92  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 

which  now,  with  many  treasures  of  typography,  is  in 
the  library  of  Lord  Spencer.  Even  in  Nineveh,  wo 
learn  from  recent  discovery,  the  dried  bricks,  while  in  a 
soft  state,  had  been  stamped  with  those  curious-looking 
inscriptions,  by  a  board  in  which  the  unsightly  letters 
were  set  in  high  relief.  "Wooden  letters  had  also  long 
been  known ;  and  yet  it  was  not  till  1440  that  Gutten- 
berg  bethought  him  of  the  process  of  printing,  and  only 
after  ten  or  twelve  years'  labour  that  he  brought  his  ex- 
periments to  perfection  and  with  one  crush  of  the  com- 
pleted press  opened  new  hopes  and  prospects  to  the 
whole  family  of  mankind.  But  things  apparently  un- 
connected are  brought  together  for  good  when  the  great 
turning-points  of  human  history  are  attained.  There  are 
always  pebbles  of  the  brook  within  reach  when  the 
warrior-shepherd  has  taken  the  sling  in  his  hand. 
Shortly  before  the  invention  of  printing,  a  discovery 
was  made  without  which  Guttenberg's  skill  would  have 
been  of  no  avail.  This  was  the  applicability  of  linen 
rags  to  the  manufacture  of  paper.  Parchment,  and  pre- 
parations of  straw  and  papyi'us,  had  sufficed  for  the 
transcriber  and  author  of  those  unliterary  times,  but 
would  have  been  inadequate  to  supply  the  demand  of 
the  new  process;  and  therefore  we  may  say  that,  as 
gunpowder  was  essential  to  the  use  of  artillery,  and 
steam-power  for  the  railway-train,  linen  paper  was  in 
dispensable  to  the  development  of  the  press.  And  tha . 
development  was  rapid  beyond  all  imagination.  In  the 
remaining  portion  of  the  century,  eight  thousand  fiv9 
hundred  and  nine  books  were  published,  of  which  the 
English  Caxton  and  his  followers  supplied  one  hundred 
and  forty-two, — a  small  contribution  in  actual  numbers, 
but  valuable  for  the  insight  it  gives  us  into  the  favourite 
literature  of  the  time.     Among  those  volumes  there  are 


PRINTING.  393 

"  Songs  of  war  for  gallant  knight, 
Lays  of  love  for  lady  bright ;" 

'The  Tale  of  Troy  divine,"  for  scholars;  "Tullie,  of  old 
»ge/'  and  "  of  Friendship/'  and  "  Yirgil's  jEneid,"  for  the 
classical ;  "  Lives  of  Our  Ladio  and  divers  Saints,"  for 
the  religious ;  and  "  The  Consolation  of  Boethius,"  for 
the  afflicted.  But  several  editions  prove  the  popularity 
of  the  Father  of  English  poetry;  and  we  find  the  "  Tales 
of  Cauntyrburrie,"  and  the  "Book  of  Fame/'  and 
"  Troylus  and  Cresyde,  made  by  Geoffrey  Chaucer,"  the 
great  and  fitting  representatives  of  the  native  English 
muse. 

"We  ought  to  remember,  in  judging  of  the  paucity  of 
books  produced  in  England,  that  the  Wars  of  the  Eoses 
broke  out  at  the  very  time  when  Guttenberg's  labours 
began.  In  such  a  season  of  struggle  and  unrest  as  the 
thirty  years  of  civil  strife — for  though  Mr.  Knight,  in 
his  very  interesting  sketch  of  this  date,*  has  shown  that 
the  period  of  actual  and  open  war  was  very  short,  the 
state  of  uneasiness  and  expectation  must  have  endured 
the  whole  time — there  was  small  encouragement  to  the 
peaceful  triumphs  of  art  or  literature.  And,  moreover, 
the  pride  of  station  was  revolted  by  the  prospect  of  the 
spread  of  information  among  the  classes  to  whom  it  had 
not  yet  reached.  The  noble  could  afford  to  acknowledge 
his  inferiority  in  learning  and  research  to  the  priest  oi 
monk,  for  it  was  their  trade  to  be  wise  and  learned,  and 
their  scholarship  was  even  considered  a  badge  of  the 
lowness  of  their  birth,  which  had  given  them  the  primer 
and  psalter  instead  of  the  horse  and  sword.  But  those 
high-hearted  cavaliers  could  ill  brook  the  notion  of  edu- 
cated clowns  and  peasants.  And,  strange  to  say,  the 
sentiment  was  shared  and  exaggerated  by  the  peasants 

♦  Popular  History— Henry  VL  , 


594 


FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 


and  clowns  themselves.  Jack  Cade  is  represented,  by 
an  anachronism  of  date  but  with  perfect  truth  of  cha- 
racter, as  profoundly  irritated  at  the  invention  of  print- 
ing, and  the  building  of  a  paper-mill,  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  such  heathenish  words  as  nominatives  and  ad- 
verbs :  so  that  the  press  began  its  career  opposed  by  the 
two  greatest  parties  of  the  State.  Yet  truth  is  mighty 
and  will  prevail,  l^o  nobility  in  Europe  gives  such  con- 
tributions to  the  general  stock  of  high  and  healthy 
thought  as  the  descendants  of  the  men  of  Towton  and 
Bosworth,  and  no  peasantry  values  more  deeply,  or  would 
defend  more  gallantly,  the  gifts  poured  upon  it  by  a  free 
and  sympathizing  press.  Warwick  the  King-maker,  if 
he  had  lived  just  now,  would  have  made  speeches  in 
Parliament  and  had  them  reported  in  the  Times,  and 
Jack  Cade  would  have  been  sent  to  the  reformatory  and 
taught  to  read  and  write. 

But,  with  the  peerages  of  Europe  greatly  thinned, 
with  mounted  feudalism  overthrown,  with  the  press  re- 
joicing as  a  giant  to  run  its  course,  something  also  was 
needed  in  order  to  make  a  wider  theatre  for  the  intro- 
duction of  the  new  life  of  men.  Another  world  lay 
beyond  the  great  waters  of  the  Atlantic.  "Whispers  had 
been  going  round  the  circle  of  earnest  inquirers,  which 
gradually  grew  louder  and  louder  till  they  reached  the 
ears  of  kings,  that  great  things  lay  hidden  in  the  awful 
and  mysterious  solitudes  of  the  ocean ;  that  westward, 
to  balance  the  preponderance  of  our  used-up  continent, 
must  be  solid  land,  equal  in  weight  and  size,  so  that  the 
uninterrupted  waters  would  conduct  the  adventurous 
mariner  to  the  farther  India  by  a  nearer  route  than 
Bartholomew  Diaz,  the  Portuguese,  had  just  dis- 
covered.  This  man  sailed  to  the  southern  ex- 
tremity of  Africa,  passed  round  to  the  east  without 
being  aware  of  his  achievement,  and  penetrated  as  far 


COLUMBUS.  395 

as  Lagoa  Bay.  But  the  crew  became  diRContentoi,  and 
the  navigator  retraced  his  steps.  Alarmed  at  the  com- 
motion of  the  vast  waves  of  the  Southern  Ocean  pour- 
ing its  floods  against  the  Table  Mountain,  he  had  retired 
from  further  research,  and  called  the  southern  point  of 
his  pilgrimage  the  Cape  of  Storms.  It  is  now  known  to 
us  by  a  happier  augury  as  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  But, 
whether  perpetually  haunted  by  tempests  or  not,  the 
truth  was  discovered  that  the  land  ceased  at  that  pro- 
montory and  left  an  unexplored  sea  beyond.  This  was 
cherished  in  many  a  heart;  for  in  this  century  maritime 
discovery  kept  pace  with  the  other  triumphs  of  mental 
power.  Wherever  ship  could  swim  man  could  venture. 
The  Azores  had  been  discovered  in  1439  and  colonized 
by  the  Portuguese  in  1440.  Already  in  possession  of 
Cape  Yerd,  Madeira,  and  the  Canaries,  Portugal  looked 
forward  to  greater  discoveries,  for  these  were  the  nurse- 
ries of  gallant  and  skilful  mariners.  But  the  glory  was 
left  for  another  nation, — though,  by  a  strange  caprice  of 
fortune,  the  chance  of  it  had  been  offered  to  nearly  all. 

The  life  of  Columbus  is  more  wonderful  than  a  ro- 
mance. He  hawked  about  his  notion  of  the  way  to 
India  at  all  the  courts  of  Europe.  By  birth  a  Genoese, 
he  considered  the  great  ocean  the  patrimony  of  any 
person  able  to  seize  it.  When  his  services,  therefore, 
were  rejected  by  his  own  country,  he  offered  them  suc- 
cessively to  Portugal,  to  Spain,  and  to  England.  Henry 
the  Seventh  was  inclined  to  venture  a  small  sum  in  the 
lottery  of  chances ;  but,  while  still  in  negotiation  with 
the  brother  of  Columbus,  the  Spanish  monarchs,  Ferdi- 
nand and  Isabella,  closed  with  the  navigator's  terms, 
and  on  the  3d  of  August,  1492,  the  squadron  of  discovery, 
consisting  of  a  vessel  of  some  size,  and  two  small  pin- 
naces, with  a  crew  at  most  of  a  hundred  persons  in  all 
the  three,  sailed  from  the  port  of  Palos,  in  Andalusia. 


296  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Three  weeks'  constant  progress  to  the  westward  took 
them  far  beyond  all  previous  navigation.  The  men  be- 
came disheartened,  discontented,  and  finally  rebellious. 
Against  all,  Columbus  bore  up  with  the  self-relying 
energy  of  a  great  mind,  but  was  driven  to  the  compro- 
mise  of  promising,  if  they  confided  in  him  for  three  days 
longer,  he  would  return,  if  the  object  of  his  voyage  was 
yet  unattained.  But  by  this  time  his  sagacious  obser- 
vation had  assured  him  of  success.  Strange  appear- 
ances began  to  be  perceived  from  the  ship's  decks.  A 
carved  piece  of  wood  floated  past,  then  a  reed  newly 
cut,  and,  best  sign  of  all,  a  branch  with  red  berries  still 
fresh.  *^  From  "all  these  symptoms,  Columbus  was  so 
confident  of  being  near  land,  that  on  the  evening  of 
the  11th  of  October,  after  public  prayers  for  success,  he 
ordered  the  sails  to  be  furled,  and  the  ships  to  lie  to, 
keeping  strict  watch,  lest  they  should  be  driven  ashore 
in  the  night.  During  this  interval  of  suspense  and  ex- 
pectation no  man  shut  his  eyes:  all  kept  upon  deck, 
gazing  intently  towards  that  quarter  where  they  ex- 
pected to  discover  the  land,  which  had  been  so  long  the 
object  of  their  wishes.  About  two  hours  before  mid- 
night, Columbus,  standing  on  the  forecastle,  observed  a 
light  at  a  distance,  and  privately  pointed  it  out  to  Pedro 
Guttierez,  a  page  of  the  queen's  wardrobe.  Guttierez 
perceiving  it,  and  calling  to  Salcedo,  comptroller  of  the 
fleet,  all  three  saw  it  in  motion,  as  if  it  were  carried 
from  place  to  place.  A  little  after  midnight  the  joyful 
sound  of  ^Land!  Ia7idl'  was  heard  from  the  Pinta, 
which  kept  always  ahead  of  the  other  ships.  But^ 
having  been  so  often  deceived  by  fallacious  appearances, 
every  man  was  now  become  slow  of  belief,  and  waited 
in  all  the  anguish  of  uncertainty  and  impatience  for  the 
return  of  day.  As  soon  as  morning  dawned,  all  doubts 
and  fears  were  dispelled.     From  every  ship  an  island 


DISCOVERY   Oie    AMERICA.  397 

wa&  seen  about  two  leagues  to  the  north,  whose  flat  and 
verdant  fields,  well  stored  with  wood,  and  watered  with 
many  rivulets,  presented  the  aspect  of  a  delightful 
country.  The  crew  of  the  Pinta  instantly  began  the 
Te  Deum  as  a  hymn  of  thanksgiving  to  God,  and  were 
joined  by  those  of  the  other  ships,  with  tears  of  joy 
and  transports  of  congratulation.  This  office  of  grati- 
tude to  Heaven  was  followed  by  an  act  of  justice  to 
their  commander.  They  threw  themselves  at  the  feet 
of  Columbus,  with  feelings  of  self-condemnation  mingled 
with  reverence.  They  implored  him  to  pardon  their 
ignorance,  incredulity,  and  insolence,  which  had  created 
him  so  much  unceasing  disquiet  and  had  so  often  ob 
structed  the  prosecution  of  his  well-concerted  plan ;  and, 
passing  in  the  warmth  of  their  admiration  from  one. 
extreme  to  another,  they  now  pronounced  the  man 
whom  they  had  so  lately  reviled  and  threatened  to  be  a 
person  inspired  by  Heaven  with  sagacity  and  fortitude 
more  than  human,  in  order  to  accomplish  a  design  so 
far  beyond  the  ideas  and  conception  of  all  former  ages.'' 
Many  excellent  writers  have  described  this  wondroue 
incident,  but  none  so  well  as  the  historian  of  America 
Dr.  Eobertson,  whose  eloquent  account  is  borrowed  in 
the  preceding  lines.  The  great  event  occurred  on  Fri- 
day, the  12th  of  October,  1492,  and  the  connection  be- 
tween  the  two  worlds  began.  The  place  he  first  landed 
at  was  San  Salvador,  one  of  the  Bahamas;  and  after 
attaching  Cuba  and  Hispaniola  to  the  Spanish  crown, 
and  going  through  imminent  perils  by  land  and  sea,  he 
achieved  his  glorious  return  to  Palos  on  the  15th  of 
March,  1493.  He  brought  with  him  some  of  the  natives 
of  the  different  islands  he  had  discovered,  and  their 
strange  appearance  and  manners  were  vouchers  for  the 
facts  he  stated.  The  whole  town,  when  he  came  into 
the  harbour,  was  in  an  uproar  of  delight.     "  The  bells 


398  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY. 

were  rung,  the  cannon  fired,  Columbus  was  received  at 
landing  with  royal  honours,  and  all  the  people,  in  solemn 
procession,  accompanied  him  and  his  crew  to  the  church, 
where  they  returned  thanks  to  Heaven,  which  had  so 
wonderfully  conducted,  and  crowned  with  success,  a 
voyage  of  greater  length,  and  of  more  importance, 
than  had  been  attempted  in  any  former  age."* 


*  Dr.  Bobert«on. 


SIXTEENTH  CENTURY. 


ISmperors  of  (J^crmang.         Hings  of  dFranci. 


A.V. 

Maximilian  I. — {cont.) 
1519.  Charles  v.,  (Isi  of  Spain.) 
1558.  Ferdinand  I. 
1564.  Maximilian  II. 
1576.  KoDOLPH  II. 

Stings  of  ISnglantr. 

Henry  Yll.—{cont.) 
1509.  Henry  VIII. 
1547.  Edward  VI. 
1553.  Mary. 
1558.  Elizabeth. 

Min^^  of  Scotlanli. 

James  IV. — [cont) 
1513.  James  V. 
1542.  Mary. 
1567.  James  VI. 


Louis  XII. — {cont) 

1515.  Francis  I. 
1547.  Henry  II. 

1559.  Francis  II. 

1560.  Charles  IX. 
1574.  Henry  III. 

{The  Bourbons.) 
1589.  Henry  IV. 

Itings  of  Spaim 

1512.  Ferdinand  V.,  (the 
Catholic.) 

1516.  Charles  I.,  (Emperor  of 

Germany.) 
1556.  Philip  II. 
1598.  Philip  III. 


I3i0tingui!8{)etr  Mtn. 

Leonardo  da  Vinci,  Michael  Angelo,  Raffaelle,  Correggio, 
Titian,  (Painters,)  Sir  Philip  Sydney,  Raleigh,  Spenser, 
Shakspeare,  (1564-1616,)  Ariosto,  Tasso,  Lope  de  Vega,  Calde- 
RON,  Cervantes,  Scaliger,  (1484-1558,)  Copernicus,  (1473-1543,) 
Knox,  (1505-1572,)  Calyin,  (1509-1564,)  Beza,  (1519-1605,) 
BiLLARMiNE,  (1542-1621,)  Tycho  Brahe,  (1546-1601.) 


THE  SIXTEENTH  CENTUKY. 

THE  REFORMATION — THE    JESUITS — ^POLICY   OP  ELIZABETH 

In  the  last  two  years  of  the  preceding  century  tho 
course  of  maritime  discovery  had  been  accelerated  by 
fresh  success.  To  balance  the  glories  of  Columbus  in 
the  West,  the  "  regions  of  the  rising  sun"  had  been  ex- 
plored by  Yasco  da  Gama,  a  Portuguese.  This  great 
navigator  sailed  back  into  the  harbour  of  Lisbon  on  the 
16th  of  September,  1499,  with  the  astonishing  news  that 
he  had  doubled  the  Cape  of  Storms,  which  had  so  alarmed 
Bartholomew  Diaz,  and  established  relations  of  amity 
and  commerce  with  the  vast  continent  of  India,  having 
traded  with  a  civilized  and  industrious  people  at  Calicut, 
a  great  city  on  the  coast  of  Malabar.  Under  these  re- 
iterated widenings  of  men's  knowledge  of  the  globe, 
the  human  mind  itself  expanded.  Familiar  names  meet 
us  from  henceforth  in  the  most  distant  quarters  of  the 
world.  All  national  or  domestic  history  becomes  mixed 
up  with  elements  hitherto  unknown.  The  balance  of 
power,  which  is  the  new  constitution  of  the  European 
States,  depends  on  circumstances  and  places  of  the  most 
heterogeneous  character.  A  treaty  between  Franco 
and  Spain,  or  between  England  and  either,  is  regulated 
by  events  occurring  on  the  Amazon  or  Ganges.  The 
whole  world  gets  more  closely  connected  than  ever  it 
was  before,  and  we  can  look  back  on  the  proceedings  of 
previous  ages  as  filling  a  very  narrow  theatre,  and  regu- 
lated by  very  contracted  interests,  when  compared  with 
the  universal  policies  on  which  public  affairs  have  now 

401 


*02  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

to  rest  At  first,  however,  the  great  results  of  these 
stupendous  discoveries  were  naturally  not  observed. 
Contemporaries  are  justly  accused  of  magnifying  tho 
small  affairs  of  life  of  which  they  are  witnesses;  but 
this  observation  does  not  hold  good  with  respect  to  the 
really  momentous  incidents  of  human  history.  A  man 
who  saw  Columbus  return  from  his  voyage,  or  Gutt en- 
berg  pulling  at  his  press,  could  not  rise  to  the  contem- 
plation of  the  prodigious  consequences  of  these  two 
events.  He  thought,  perhaps,  a  quarrel  between  two 
neighbouring  potentates,  or  a  battle  between  France 
and  Spain,  the  greatest  incident  of  his  time.  His  son 
forgot  all  about  the  quarrel;  his  grandson  had  no  recol- 
lection of  the  battle;  but  widening  in  a  still  increasing 
circle,  expanding  into  still  more  wonderful  proportions, 
were  the  Discovery  of  America  and  the  Art  of  Printing, 
— showing  themselves  in  combinations  of  events  and 
changes  of  circumstances  where  they  were  never  ex- 
pected to  appear, — the  one  threatening  to  overthrow 
the  freedom  of  every  State  in  Europe  by  the  supremacy 
of  the  Spanish  crown,  the  other  in  reality  preventing 
the  chance  of  that  consummation  by  raising  up  the 
indomitable  spirit  of  spiritual  liberty.  For  there  now 
came  to  the  aid  of  national  independence  the  far  more 
elevating  feelings  of  religious  emancipation.  Protest- 
antism was  not  limited  in  this  century  to  denial  of  the 
spiritual  authority  of  popes,  but  embodied  itself  also  in 
resistance  to  the  politrcal  ambition  of  kings.  America 
might  have  enabled  Charles  the  Fifth  to  conquer  all 
Europe,  if  the  Eeformation  had  not  strengthened  men's 
minds  with  a  determination  to  stand  up  against  oppres- 
sion. 

But  the  commencement  of  this  century  gave  no  inti- 
mation of  its  tempestuous  course.  The  first  few  years 
saw  the  peaceable  accession  to  the  thrones  of  Spain  and 


SPAIN.  403 

France  and  England  of  the  three  sovereigns  whose  con- 
temporaneous reigns,  and  also  whose  personal  characters, 
had  the  most  preponderating  influence  on  the  succeeding 
current  of  events.  We  have  left  Spain  f^r  a  long  time 
out  of  these  general  views  of  a  century's  condition  ana 
Bjiecial  notices  of  individual  incidents  which  affected 
the  condition  of  the  world;  for  Spain  for  a  long  timo 
lay  obscurely  between  the  ocean  and  the  Pyrenees  and 
carried  on  wars  and  policies  which  were  limited  by  its 
territorial  bounds.  But,  if  wo  take  a  hurried  retro- 
spect of  the  last  few  years,  we  shall  see  that  the  different 
nations  contained  in  the  Peninsula  had  amalgamated 
into  one  mighty  and  strongly-cemented  State.  Ferdi- 
nand  of  Aragon,  by  marriage  with  Isabella 
of  Castile,  united  the  various  nationalities 
under  one  homogeneous  government,  and  by  wisdom 
and  magnanimity — the  wisdom  being  the  man's  and 
the  magnanimity  the  woman's — ^had  rendered  forever 
famous  the  joint  reign  of  husband  and  wife,  had  recon- 
ciled the  jarring  factions  of  their  respective  subjects, 
and  seen  with  the  triumphant  faith  of  believers  and  the 
satisfaction  of  sagacious  rulers  the  reunion  of  the  last 
Mohammedan  State  to  the  dominion  of  the  Cross  and 
of  the  crown.  They  watched  the  long,  slow  march  of 
the  Moorish  king  and  his  cavaliers  as  they  took  their 
way  in  poverty  and  despair  from  the  towers  and 
meadows  of  Granada,  which  a  possession  of  seven 
hundred  years  had  failed  to  make  their  own.  This — 
the  conquest  of  Granada — took  place  in  1491 ;  and  1516 
saw  the  supremo  power  over  all  united  Spain  descend 
on  the  head  of  the  grandson  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella, 
— inheriting,  along  with  their  royal  dignity,  the  cautious 
wisdom  of  the  one  and  the  wider  intelligence  of  the 
Other  In  three  years  from  that  time — it  will  be  easy 
to  remember  that  Charles's  age  is  the  same  as  the  cen^ 


K>*  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

tury's — ^he  was  elected  to  the  Imperial  crown,  so  that 

the  greatest  dominion  ever  held  by  one  man  since  the 

days  of  Charlemagne  now  fell  to  the  rule  of  a  youth  of 

nineteen  years  of   age.     Germany,  the   Netherlands, 

Naples,  Sicily,  and  Spain,  more  than  equalled  the  extent 

and  power  of  Charlemagne's  empire.     But  ere  Charles 

was  a  year  older,  vaster  dominions  than  Charlemagne 

had  ever  dreamt  of  acknowledged  his  royal  sway;  for 

,^„„   Montezuma,  the    Emperor  of  Mexico,  whose 
A.D.  1520.  '  ^        .■,•,,..., 

realm  was  without  appreciable  limit  either  in 

size  or  wealth,  professed  himself  the  subject  and  servant 
of  the  Spanish  king. 

Henry  the  Eighth  of  England  had  also  succeeded  at 
an  early  age,  being  but  eighteen  in  1509,  when  the 
death  of  his  father,  the  politic  and  successful  founder  of 
the  Tudor  dynasty,  left  him  with  a  people  silent  if  not 
quite  satisfied,  and  an  exchequer  overflowing  with  what 
would  now  amount  to  ten  or  twelve  millions  of  gold. 
This  treasure  had  been  accumulated  by  the  infamous 
exactions  of  the  late  sovereign,  who  was  aided  in  the 
ignoble  service  by  two  men  of  the  names  of  Empson 
and  Dudley.  These  were  spies  and  informers,  not,  as 
in  other  climes  and  countries,  about  the  religious  or 
political  sentiments  of  the  people,  but  about  their  titles 
to  their  estates,  the  fines  they  were  disposed  to  pay,  or 
the  bribes  they  would  advance  to  the  royal  extortioner 
to  avoid  litigation  and  injustice.  Henry  had  an  admi- 
rable opportunity  of  showing  his  hatred  of  these  prac- 
tices, and  availed  himself  of  it  at  once.  Before  he  had 
been  four  months  on  the  throne,  Empson  and  Dudley 
were  ignominiously  hanged ;  and  with  safe  conscience, 
after  this  sacrifice  at  the  shrine  of  legality,  he  entered 
into  possession  of  the  pilfered  store.  The  people  ap- 
plauded the  rapid  decision  of  his  character  in  both  these 
instances,  and  scarcely  grudged  him  the  money  when 


FRANCE.  406 

the  subordinates  were  given  up  to  their  revenge.  They 
could  not,  indeed,  grudge  their  young  king  any  thing ; 
his  manners  were  so  open  and  sincere,  his  laugh  so 
ready,  and  his  teeth  so  white ;  for  we  are  not  to  forget, 
in  compliment  to  what  is  facetiously  called  the  dignity 
of  history,  the  immense  advantages  a  ruler  gains  by 
the  fact  of  being  good-looking.  Nobody  feels  inclined 
to  find  fault  with  a  lad  of  eighteen,  if  moderately  en- 
dowed with  health  and  features ;  but  when  that  lad  is 
eminently  handsome,  rioting  in  strength  and  spirits, 
open  in  disposition,  and,  above  all,  a  king,  you  need  not 
wonder  at  the  universal  inclination  to  overlook  his 
faults,  to  exaggerate  his  virtues,  and  even,  after  an 
interval  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  years,  to  hear  the 
greatest  tyrant  of  our  history,  and  the  worst  man 
perhaps  of  his  time,  talked  of  by  the  ordinary  title  of 
Bluff  King  Hal.  If  he  had  been  as  ugly  and  hump- 
backed as  his  grand-uncle  Eichard  the  Third,  he  would 
have  been  detested  from  the  first. 

But  in  the  neighbouring  land  of  France  there  reigned 
at  the  same  time  a  prince  almost  as  handsome  as  Henry, 
and  nearly  as  popular  with  his  people,  with  as  little 
real  cause.  In  1515,  Francis  the  First  was  twenty 
years  of  age,  a  perfect  specimen  of  manly  strength, — 
accomplished  in  all  knightly  exercises, — generous  and 
magnificent  in  his  intercourse  with  his  nobility, — and 
the  greatest  roue  and  debauchee  in  all  the  kingdom  of 
Franco.  Here,  then,  at  the  beginning  of  the  age  we 
have  now  to  examine,  were  the  three  mightiest  sove- 
reigns of  Europe,  all  arriving  at  their  crowns  before  at- 
taining their  majority ;  and  with  so  many  years  before 
them,  and  such  powerful  nations  obeying  their  com- 
mands, great  prospects  for  good  or  evil  were  opening  on 
6Le  world.  But  in  the  early  years  of  the  century  no 
human  eye  perceived  in  what  direction  the  future  was 


*06  SIXTEENTH    CENTURY. 

going  to  pursue  its  course.  People  were  all  watchiDg 
for  the  first  indication  of  what  was  to  come,  and  kept 
their  eyes  on  the  courts  of  Paris  and  London  and 
Madrid ;  but  nobody  suspected  that  the  real  champions 
of  the  time  were  already  marshalling  their  forces  in  far 
different  situations.  There  was  a  thoughtful  monk  in  a 
convent  in  Germany,  and  a  Spanish  soldier  before  the  walls 
of  Pampeluna.  These  were  the  true  movers  of  men's 
minds,  of  the  great  thoughts  by  which  events  are  created ; 
and  their  names  were  soon  to  sound  louder  than  those  of 
Henry  or  Charles  or  Francis;  for  one  was  Martin  Luther, 
the  hero  of  the  Reformation,  and  the  other  was  Ignatius 
Loyola,  the  founder  of  the  Jesuits.  Take  note  of  them 
here  as  mere  accessories  to  the  march  of  general  history : 
we  shall  return  to  them  again  as  characteristics  of  the 
century  on  which  they  placed  their  indelible  mark.  At 
this  time,  in  the  gay  young  days  of  the  three  crowned 
striplings,  these  future  combatants  are  totally  unknown. 
Brother  Martin  is  singing  charming  hymns  to  the  Yirgin, 
in  a  voice  which  it  was  delightful  to  hear;  and  Don 
Ignacio  is  also  singing  to  his  guitar  the  praises  of  one 
of  the  beautiful  maidens  of  his  native  land.  Public 
opinion  was  still  stagnant  with  regard  to  home-affairs, 
in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  the  infant  press.  People,  bowed 
down  by  the  claims  of  implicit  obedience  exacted  from 
them  by  the  Church,  accepted  with  wondering  submis- 
sion the  pontificate  of  such  an  atrocious  murderer  as 
Alexander  the  Sixth;  and  some  even  ingeniously  founded 
an  argument  of  the  divine  institution  of  the  Papacy 
apon  its  having  survived  the  eleven  years'  desecration 
of  that  monster  of  cruelty  and  unbelief.  Yet  now  it 
happened  by  a  strange  coincidence  that  the  chair  of  St. 
Peter  was  to  be  filled  by  a  gayer  and  more  accomplished 
ruler  than  any  of  the  earthly  thrones  we  have  men- 
tioned.   In  1513,  Leo  the  Tenth,  the  most  celebrated  of 


VENICE.  401 

the  family  of  the  Medicis  of  Florence,  put  on  the  tiara 
at  the  age  of  thirty-six,  a  period  of  life  which  was  con- 
sidered as  youthful  for  the  father  of  Christendom  as 
even  the  boyish  years  of  the  temporal  kings.  And  Leo 
did  not  belie  the  promise  of  his  juvenility.  None  of  the 
dulness  of  age,  or  even  the  caution  of  maturity,  was 
perceived  in  his  public  or  private  conduct.  He  was  a 
patron  of  arts  and  sciences,  and  buffoonery,  and  infi- 
delity; and  it  is  curious  to  observe  how  the  pretensions 
of  Eome  were  more  shaken  by  the  frivolous  magnifi- 
cence of  a  good-hearted,  graceful  voluptuary  than  they 
had  been  by  the  crimes  of  his  two  immediate  prede- 
cessors, the  truculent  Borgia  and  the  warlike  Julius  the 
Second. 

This  latter  pontiff  was  intended  by  nature  for  a  leader 
of  Free  Lances,  to  live  forever  in  "  the  joy  of  battle," 
and  must  have  felt  a  little  out  of  his  element  as  the  head 
of  the  Christian  Church.  However,  he  rapidly  dis- 
covered that  he  was  a  secular  prince  as  well  as  a 
spiritual  teacher,  and  cast  his  eyes  in  the  former  ca- 
pacity with  ominous  ill  will  on  the  industrious  Eepublic 
of  Yenice.  The  fishermen  and  fugitives  of  many  cen- 
turies before,  who  had  settled  among  the  Adriatic 
lagoons,  had  risen  into  the  position  of  princes  and 
treasurers  of  Europe.  By  their  possessions  in  the  East, 
and  their  trading-factories  established  along  the  whole 
route  from  India  to  the  Mediterranean,  they  had  made 
themselves  the  intermediaries  between  the  barbaric 
pearls  and  gold,  the  silks  and  spices,  of  the  Oriental 
regions,  and  the  requirements  of  the  "West.  Their  gal- 
leys were  daily  bringing  them  the  commodities  of  the 
Levant,  which  they  distributed  at  an  exorbitant  profit 
among  the  nations  beyond  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar. 
Mercantile  wealth  and  maritime  enterprise  elevated  the 
taste  and  confidence  of  those  Venetian  traffickers,  till 


408  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

their  whole  territory,  amid  the  lifeless  waters  of  their 
canals,  was  covered  with  stately  palaces,  and  their  fleets 
assumed  the  dominion  of  the  inland  seas.  On  the  main- 
land they  had  stretched  their  power  over  Dalmatia  and 
Trieste,  and  in  their  own  peninsula  over  Eimini  and 
Ferrara  and  a  great  part  of  the  Eomagna.  Two  ruling 
passions  agitated  the  soul  of  Julius  the  Second :  one  was 
to  recover  whatever  territory  or  influence  had  once 
belonged  to  the  Holy  See ;  the  other  was  to  expel  the 
hated  barbarian,  whether  Frenchman,  or  Swiss,  or 
Austrian,  from  the  soil  of  Italy.  To  achieve  this  last 
object  he  would  sacrifice  any  thing  except  the  first; 
and  to  unite  the  two  was  difficult.  He  made  his  ap- 
proaches to  Yenice  in  a  gentle  manner  at  first.  He 
asked  her  to  restore  the  lands  she  had  lately  won, 
which  he  claimed  as  appendages  of  his  chair,  because 
they  had  been  torn  unjustly  from  the  original  holders 
by  Caesar  Borgia,  the  son  of  Alexander  the  Infamous ; 
and  if  she  had  agreed  to  this  he  would  no  doubt  have 
proceeded  with  his  further  scheme  of  banishing  all 
ultramontane  invaders.  But  as  the  commercial  council 
of  the  great  emporium  hesitated  at  giving  up  what  they 
had  entered  in  their  books  as  fairly  their  own,  he  altered 
his  note  in  a  moment,  put  on  the  insignia  of  his  holy 
office,  and,  denouncing  the  astonished  republic  as  rebel- 
lious and  ungrateful  to  Mother  Church,  he  called  in  the 
aid  of  the  very  French  whom  he  was  so  anxious  to  get 
quit  of,  to  execute  his  judgment  upon  the  offending 
State.  Yenice  was  rich,  and  France  at  that  time  was 
poor  and  at  all  times  is  greedy.  So  preparations  were 
made  for  an  assault  with  the  readiness  and  glee  with 
which  a  party  of  freebooters  would  make  a  descent  on 
the  Bank  of  England.  The  temptation  also  was  too 
great  to  be  resisted  by  other  kings  and  princes,  who 
were  as  hungry  for  spoil  and  as  attached  to  religion  as 


LEAGUE    OF    CAMBRAI.  409 

iho  French.  So  in  an  incredibly  short  space  of  time  the 
league  of  Cambrai  was  joined  by  Maximilian,  the  Empe- 
ror of  Germany,  and  Ferdinand  of  Spain,  and  dukes 
and  marquesses  of  less  note.  There  were  few  of  the 
Southern  potentates,  indeed,  who  had  not  some  cause 

of  complaint   against  the   haughty  Venetians. 

Some  (as  the  German  Maximilian)  they  had 
humbled  by  defeat ;  others  they  had  insulted  by  their 
purse-proud  insolence;  others,  again,  by  superiority  in 
commercial  skill ;  and  all,  by  the  fact  of  being  wealthy 
and,  as  they  fancied,  weak. 

Louis  the  Twelfth  of  France  was  first  in  the  field.  He 
conquered  at  Agnadello,  and,  forcing  his  way  to  the 
shore,  alarmed  the  marble  halls  of  the  Venetians  with 
the  sound  of  his  harmless  cannonade.  The  Pope  was 
next,  and  took  possession  of  the  towns  he  wanted.  The 
Duke  of  Ferrara  laid  hold  of  some  loose  articles  in  the 
confusion,  and  the  Marquis  of  Mantua  got  back  some 
villages  which  his  grandfather  had  lost.  Maximilian 
was  disconsolate  at  not  being  in  time  for  the  general 
pillage,  and  had  to  content  himself  with  Padua  and 
Vicenza  and  Verona.  Maximilian  was  a  gentleman  in 
difficulties,  who  has  the  misfortune  to  be  known  in  his- 
tory as  Max  the  Penniless.  The  Venetians  sent  to  tell 
him  they  were  ready  to  acknowledge  his  suzerainty  as 
emperor,  and  to  pay  him  a  tribute  of  fifty  thousand 
ducats.  The  man  would  have  forgiven  them  a  hundred 
times  their  offences  for  half  the  money,  and  was  anxious 
to  close  with  their  offer.  But  they  had  made  no  similar 
proposition  to  the  French  king,  nor  to  Ferdinand,  nor 
even  of  a  ten-pound  note  to  the  Mantuan  Marquis  or 
the  Magnifico  of  Ferrara.  Wherefore  they  all  began  to 
hate  the  emperor.  Louis  declined  to  give  him  any  more 
assistance.  Julius  sent  a  secret  message  to  the  Vene- 
tians that  Holy  Church  was  not  inexorable ;  and  Venice. 
18 


ilO 


SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 


relying  on  the  placability  of  Eome,  hung  out  her  flag 
against  her  secular  foes  in  prouder  defiance  than  ever. 
She  knelt  at  the  feet  of  the  Pope,  and  allowed  him  to 
retain  his  acquisitions  in  Eomagna  and  elsewhere;  and 
as  his  first  object,  the  enrichment  of  his  domain,  was 
accomplished,  he  lost  no  time  in  carrying  out  the 
second.  By  the  fortunate  possession  of  an  unlimited 
power  of  loosing  mankind  from  unpleasant  oaths 
and  obligations,  he  astonished  his  late  confede- 
rates by  publishing  a  sentence  releasing  the  Venetians 
from  the  censures  of  the  Church  and  the  Allies  from  the 
covenants  of  the  Treaty  of  Cambrai.  He  then  joined 
the  pontifical  forces  to  the  troops  of  Venice,  and  in  hot 
haste  made  a  rush  upon  the  French.  He  bought  over 
Ferdinand  of  Spain  to  the  cause  by  giving  him  the  in- 
vestiture  of  Naples,  hired  a  multitude  of  Swiss  mercen- 
aries, and,  drawing  the  sword  like  a  stout  man-at-arms 
as  he  was,  he  laid  siege  to  Mirandola.  In  spite  of  his 
great  age, — he  was  now  past  seventy, — he  performed  all 
the  offices  of  an  active  general,  visited  the  trenches,  en- 
couraged his  army,  and  after  a  two  months'  bombard- 
ment disdained  to  enter  the  city  by  the  opened  gate, 
but  was  triumphantly  carried  in  military  pomp  through 
a  breach  in  the  shattered  wall.  His  perfidy  as  a  states- 
man and  audacity  as  a  soldier  were  too  much  for  the 
Emperor  and  the  King  of  France.  They  col- 
lected  as  many  troops  as  they  could,  and  threat- 
ened to  summon  a  general  council ;  for  what  excommu- 
nication as  an  instrument  of  offence  was  to  the  popes, 
a  general  council  was  to  the  civil  power.  The  French 
clergy  met  at  Tours,  and  supported  the  Crown  against 
Julius  The  German  emperor  was  still  more  indignant. 
He  published  a  paper  of  accusations,  in  which  the  bitter- 
ness of  his  penniless  condition  is  not  concealed.  "  The 
enormous   sums   daily   extracted   from   Germany,"   ho 


MAXIMILIAN.  *n 

Bays,  "are  perverted  to  the  purposes  of  luxury  oi 
worldly  views,  instead  of  being  employed  for  the  service 
of  God  or  against  the  Infidels.  So  extensive  a  territory 
has  been  alienated  for  the  benefit  of  the  Pope  that 
Bcarcely  a  florin  of  revenue  remains  to  the  Emperor  in 
Italy."  Louis  and  the  French  appeared  triumphant  in 
the  field ;  but  their  triumphs  threw  them  into  dismay, 
for  their  protean  adversary,  when  defeated  as  temporal 
prince,  thundered  against  them  as  successor  of  St.  Peter, 
and  taught  them  that  their  victories  were  impiety  and 
their  acquisitions  sacrilege.  A  hard  case  for  Louis, 
where  if  he  retreated  his  ten'itories  were  seized,  and  if 
he  advanced  his  soul  was  in  danger.  The  war,  which 
had  begun  as  a  combination  against  Venice,  was  now 
converted  into  a  holy  league  in  defence  of  Eome. 
Spaniards  came  to  the  rescue ;  and  Henry,  the  youthful 
champion  of  England,  and  all  who  either  thought  they 
loved  religion  or  who  really  hated  France,  were  inspired 
as  if  for  a  crusade.  And  Maximilian  himself, 
poor  and  friendless, — how  was  it  possible  lor 
him  to  continue  obstinately  to  reject  the  overtures  of 
the  Pope,  the  purse  of  the  Venetians,  or  the  far  more 
tempting  whisperings  of  Ferdinand  of  Aragon,  who  said 
to  him,  "  Julius  is  very  old.  "Would  it  not  be  possible 
to  win  over  the  cardinals  to  make  your  majesty  his  suc- 
cessor ?"  Such  a  golden  dream  had  never  suggested  it- 
self to  the  pauperized  emperor  before.  He  swallowed 
the  bait  at  once.  He  determined  to  bribe  the  Sacred 
College,  and,  to  raise  the  necessary  funds,  pawned  the 
archducal  mantle  of  Austria  to  the  rich  merchants,  the 
Fuggcrs  of  Antwerp,  for  a  large  sum,  and  wrote  to  his 
daughter  Margaret,  "To-morrow  I  shall  send  a  bishop 
to  the  Pope,  to  conclude  an  agreement  with  him  that  I 
may  be  appointed  his  coadjutor  and  on  his  death  succeed 
to  the  Papacy,  that  you  may  be  bound  to  worship  me,— 


"'^  SIXTEENTH    CENTURY. 

of  which  I  shall  be  very  proud."  This  may  appear  a 
rather  jocular  announcement  of  so  serious  a  design;  but 
there  is  no  doubt  that  the  project  was  entertained. 
Matters,  however,  advanced  at  too  rapid  a  pace  for  the 
Blow  calculations  of  politicians.  The  French,  by  a  noble 
victory  at  Ravenna,  established  their  fame  as  warriors, 
and  roused  the  fear  of  all  the  other  powers.  Maxi- 
milian grasped  at  last  the  Yenetian  ducats  which  had 
been  offered  him  so  long  before,  and  turned  suddenly 
against  his  ally.  Ferdinand  and  Henry  pressed  for- 
ward on  France  itself  on  the  side  of  the  Pyrenees. 
Foot  by  foot  the  land  of  Italy  was  set  free  from  the 
French  invaders,  and  Julius  the  Second,  dying  before 
the  emperor's  plans  were  matured,  left  the  tangled  web 
of  European  politics  to  be  unravelled  by  a  younger 
hand. 

We  have  dwelt  on  this  strange  contest,  where  many 
sovereign  states  combined  to  overthrow  a  colony  of 
traders,  and  failed  in  all  their  attempts,  because  it  is  the 
last  great  appearance  that  Yenice  has  made  in  the 
general  history  of  the  world.  From  this  time  her  power 
rapidly  decayed.  Her  galleys  lay  rotting  at  their 
wharves,  and  the  marriage  of  her  Doge  to  the  Sea  was 
a  symbol  without  a  meaning.  The  discovery  of  a  pass- 
age to  India  by  the  Cape,  which  we  saw  announced  to 
Europe  by  Yasco  da  Gama  in  the  last  year  of  the  late 
century,  was  a  sentence  of  death  to  the  carriers  of  the 
Adriatic.  Commerce  sought  other  channels  and  en- 
riched other  lands.  Wherever  the  merchant-vessels 
crowded  the  harbour,  whether  with  the  commodities  of 
the  East  or  AVest,  the  war-ship  was  sure  to  follow,  and 
the  treasures  gained  in  traffic  to  be  guarded  by  a  navy. 
All  the  ports  of  Spain  became  rallying-places  of  wealth 
and  power  in  this  century.  Portugal  covered*every  sea 
with  her  guns  and  galleons;  Holland  rose  to  dignity 


TENDENCY   TO   CONSOLIDATION.  418 

Riid  freedom  by  her  heavy-armed  marine ;  and  England 
began  the  career  of  enterprise  and  liberty  which  is  still 
tj^ified  and  assured  by  the  preponderance  of  her  com- 
mercial and  royal  fleets.  Questions  are  asked — which 
the  younger  among  us,  who  may  live  to  see  the  answer, 
may  amuse  themselves  by  considering — as  to  the  chance 
of  Venice  recovering  her  ancient  commerce  if  the  path- 
way of  Eastern  trade  be  again  traced  down  the  Medi- 
terranean, when  the  Isthmus  of  Suez  shall  be  cut 
through  by  a  canal  or  curtailed  by  a  railway.  In 
former  times  the  whole  civilized  world  lay  like  a  golden 
fringe  round  the  shores  of  that  one  sea,  and  the  nation 
which  predominated  there,  either  in  wealth  or  arms, 
was  mistress  of  the  globe.  But  the  case  is  altered  now. 
If  the  Gates  of  Hercules  were  permanently  closed,  the 
commerce  of  the  world  would  still  go  on;  and,  so  far  from 
a  Mediterranean  supremacy  indicating  a  universal  pre- 
eminence, it  is  perhaps  worthy  of  remark  that  the  only 
Mediterranean  nations  which  have  in  later  times  been 
recognised  as  of  first-rate  rank  in  Europe  have  had 
their  principal  ports  upon  the  Atlantic  and  in  the 
Channel. 

There  is  a  circumstance  which  we  may  observe  as 
characteristic  of  many  of  the  European  states  at  this 
time, — the  desire  of  combination  and  consolidation  at 
home  even  more  than  of  foreign  conquest.  In  Spain 
the  cessation  of  the  oligarchy  of  kingships  had  esta- 
blished a  national  crown.  The  hopes  of  recasting  the 
separated  and  mutilated  limbs  of  ancient  Latium  into  a 
gigantic  Italy  were  rife  in  that  sunny  land  of  high  re- 
solves and  futile  acts.  In  Germany,  the  official  supre- 
macy of  the  emperor  was  insufficient  to  prevent  the 
strong  definement  of  the  corporate  nationalities.  Hol- 
land sectfred  its  individuality  by  unheard-of  efforts;  and 
In  England  the  great  thouf^ht  took  possession  of  tho 


"4  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

political  mind  of  a  union  of  the  whole  island.  Yisioni 
already  floated  before  the  statesmen  on  both  sides  of 
tlie  Tweed  of  a  Great  Britain  freed  from  intestine  dis- 
turbance and  guarded  by  undisputed  seas.  But  the 
general  intelligence  was  not  yet  sufficiently  far  ad- 
vanced. The  Scotch  were  too  Scotch  and  the  English 
too  English  to  sink  their  national  differences.;  and  we 
can  only  pay  homage  to  the  wisdom  which  by  a  mar- 
riage between  the  royal  houses — ^James  the  Fourth, 
and  Margaret  of  England — ^planted  the  promise 
which  came  afterwards  to  maturity  in  the  junc- 
tion of  the  crowns  in  1603,  and  the  indissoluble  union 
of  the  countries  in  1707. 

Meantime,  the  wooing  was  of  the  harshest.  The 
last  great  battle,  Flodden,  that  marked  the  enmity  of 
the  kingdoms,  was  decided  in  this  century,  and  has  left 
a  deep  and  sorrowful  impression  even  to  our  own  times. 
There  is  not  a  cottage  in  Scotland  where  "The  Fight  of 
Flodden"  is  not  remembered  yet.  And  its  effects  were 
so  desolating  and  dispiriting  that  it  may  be  considered 
the  death-bed  to  the  feeling  of  equality  which  had 
hitherto  ennobled  the  weaker  nation.  From  this  time 
England  held  the  position  of  a  virtual  superior,  regu- 
lating her  conduct  without  much  regard  to  the  dignity 
or  self-respect  of  her  neighbour,  and  employing  the  arts 
of  diplomacy,  and  the  meaner  tricks  of  bribery  and  cor- 
ruption, only  because  they  were  more  easy  and  less  ex- 
pensive than  the  open  method  of  invasion  and  conquest. 
"  Scotland's  shield"  was  indeed  broken  at  Flodden,  but 
her  character  for  courage  and  honour  remained.  It 
was  the  treachery  of  Sol  way  Moss,  and  the  venality  of 
most  of  the  surviving  nobility,  that  were  the  real  causes 
of  her  weakness,  and  of  the  subordinate  place  which  at 
this  time  she  held  in  Europe.  * 

Thus  the   object  which  in   other  nations  had  boon 


CONDITION   OP   SCOTLAND.  41ft 

i^ained  by  a  union  of  crowns  was  attained  also  in  our 
island  by  the  absence  of  opposition  between  the  peoples 
Flodden  and  Pinkie  may  therefore  be  looked  upon  with 
kindlier  eyes  if  they  are  regarded  as  steps  to  the  forma- 
tion of  so  great  a  realm.  No  nation  retained  its  feudal 
organization  so  long  as  Scotland,  or  so  completely  do- 
parted  from  the  original  spirit  of  feudalism.  Instead  of 
being  leaders  and  protectors  of  their  dependants,  and  at- 
tached vassals  of  the  kings,  the  barons  of  the  North  were 
an  oligarchy  of  armed  conspirators  both  against  the 
Crown  and  the  people.  Few  of  the  earlier  Stuarts  died 
in  peaceful  bed;  for  even  those  of  them  who  escaped 
the  dagger  of  the  assassin  were  hunted  to  death  by  the 
opposition  and  falsehood  of  the  chiefs.  Perpetually 
engaged  in  plots  against  the  throne  or  forays  against 
each  other,  the  Scottish  nobility  weakened  their  country 
both  at  home  and  abroad.  Law  could  have  no  authority 
where  mailed  warriors  settled  every  thing  by  the  sword, 
and  no  resistance  could  be  offered  to  a  foreign  enemy  by 
men  so  divided  among  themselves.  Down  to  a  period 
when  the  other  nations  of  Europe  were  under  the  rule 
of  legal  tribunals,  the  High  Street  of  Edinburgh  was 
the  scene  of  violence  and  bloodshed  between  rival  lords 
who  were  too  powerful  for  control  by  the  civil  authority. 
A  succession  of  foolishly  rash  or  unwisely  lenient  sove- 
reigns left  this  ferocity  and  independence  unchecked; 
and  though  poetry  and  patriotism  now  combine  to  cast 
a  melancholy  grace  on  the  defeat  at  Flodden,  from  the 
Roman  spirit  with  which  the  intelligence  was  received 
by  the  population  of  the  capital,  the  unbiassed  inquirer 
must  confess  that,  with  the  exception  of  the  single 
virtue  of  personal  courage,  the  Scottish  array  was  enno- 
bled bj'  no  quality  w^hich  would  have  justified  its  success. 
It  was  ill  commanded,  ill  disciplined,  and  ill  combined. 
The  nobility,  as  usual,  were  disaffected  to  the  king  and 


06  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

averse  to  the  war.  But  the  crown-tenants  and  com- 
monalty  of  the  Lowhinds  were  always  ready  for  an 
affray  with  England;  and  James  the  Fourth,  the  most 
chivalrous  of  that  line  of  chivalrous  and  unfortunate 
princes,  merrily  crossed  the  Border  and  prepared  for 
,„.,  feats  of  arms  as  if  at  a  tournament.     The  cau- 

A.D.  1513. 

tious  Earl  of  Surrey,  the  leader  of  the  English 
army,  availed  himself  of  the  knightly  prepossessions  of 
his  enemy,  and  sent  a  herald,  in  all  the  frippery  of 
tabard  and  cross,  to  challenge  him  to  battle  on  a  set 
day,  when  Lord  Thomas  Howard  would  run  a  tilt  with 
him  at  the  head  of  the  English  van.  James  fell  into  the 
snare,  and  regulated  his  movements,  in  fact,  by  the 
direction  of  his  opponent.  When,  in  a  momentary 
glimpse  of  common  sense,  he  established  his  quarters 
on  the  side  of  a  hill,  from  which  it  would  have  been  im- 
possible to  dislodge  him,  Surrey  relied  on  the  absurd 
generosity  of  his  character,  and  sent  a  message  to  com- 
plain that  he  had  placed  himself  on  ground  "  more  like 
a  fortress  or  a  camp  than  an  ordinary  battle-field." 
James  pretended  to  despise  the  taunt,  and  even  to  refuse 
admission  to  the  herald;  but  it  worked  on  his  susceptible 
and  fearless  nature;  for  we  find  that  he  allowed  the 
English  to  pass  through  diflScult  and  narrow  ways, 
which  were  commanded  by  his  guns,  and  when  they 
were  fairly  marshalled  on  level  ground  he  set  fire  to  his 
tents  and  actually  descended  the  hill  to  place  himself  on 
equal  terms  with  the  foe.  Such  a  beginning  had  the 
only  possible  close.  Strong  arms  and  sharp  swords  are 
excellent  supports  of  generalship,  but  cannot  always  be 
a  substitute  for  it.  Never  did  the  love  of  fight  so  in- 
herent in  the  Scottish  character  display  itself  more 
gallantly  than  on  this  day.  Again  and  again  the  Scot- 
tish earls  dashed  forward  against  the  English  squares. 
These  were  composed  of  the  steadiest  of  the  pikemen 


FLODDEN 


417 


flanked  by  the  wondrous  archers  who  bad  turned  so 
many  a  tide  of  battle.  Fain  would  the  veteran  warriors 
have  kept  their  men  in  check;  fain  would  the  com- 
manders of  the  French  auxiliaries  have  restrained  the 
Scottish  advance.  But  the  Northern  blood  was  up. 
Onward  they  went,  in  spite  of  generalship  and  all  the 
roles  of  discipline,  and  with  a  great  crash  burst  upon 
the  wall  of  steel  It  was  magnificent,  as  the  Frenchmen 
said  at  Balaklava,  but  it  was  not  war.  Repelled  by  the 
recoil  of  their  own  impetuous  charge,  they  fell  into 
fragments  and  encumbered  the  gory  plain.  Very  few 
fled,  very  few  had  the  opportunity  of  flying;  for  the 
cloth-yard  shaft  never  missed  its  aim.  There  was  no 
crying  for  quarter  or  sparing  of  the  flashing  blade. 
Both  sides  were  irritated  to  madness.  James  pushed 
on,  shouting  and  waving  his  bloody  sword,  and  was 
wounded  by  an  arrow  and  gashed  with  a  ponderous 
battle-axe  when  he  had  forced  himself  within  a  few 
paces  of  Surrey.  Darkness  was  now  closing  in.  The 
king's  death  was  rapidly  known,  but  stiU  the  struggle 
went  on.  At  length  the  wearied  armies  ceased  to  kill. 
The  Scotch  retreated,  and  in  the  dawn  of  the  next 
morning  a  compact  body  of  them  was  seen  still  threaten- 
ing on  the  side  of  a  distant  hiU.  But  the  day  was  lost 
and  won.  The  chivalry  of  Scotland  received  a  blow 
from  which  it  never  recovered.  What  Courtrai  had 
been  to  the  French,  and  Granson  and  Nanci  to  the  Bur- 
gundians,  and  Towton  and  Tewkesbury  to  the  English, 
the  9th  of  September,  1513,  was  to  the  peerage  of  the 
North.  Thirteen  earls  were  killed,  fifteen  barons,  and 
chiefs  and  members  of  all  the  gentle  houses  in  the  land. 
Some  were  stripped  utterly  desolate  by  this  appalling 
slaughter;  and  from  many  a  hall,  as  well  as  from  humble 
shieling,  rose  the  burden  of  the  tearful  ballad,  "The 
flowers  o'  the  forest  are  a'  wedd  awa'."     There  were  ten 


«8 


SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 


thousand  slain  in  the  field,  the  gallant  James  cut  off  in 
the  prime  of  strength  and  manhood,  and  the  sceptre 
whi  zh  required  the  grasp  of  an  Edward  the  First  left  tc 
hd  the  prize  of  an  unprincipled  queen-mother,  or  any 
ambitious  cabal  which  could  conspire  to  seize  it.  James 
the  Fifth  was  but  a  year  or  two  old,  and  the  country 
discouraged  and  demoralized. 

But  Henry  the  Eighth  was  destined  to  some  other 
triumphs  in  this  fortunate  year.  First  there  was  the 
victory  which  his  forces  won  at  Guinegate,  near  Calais, 
where  the  French  chivalry  fled  in  the  most  ignominious 
manner,  and  struck  their  rowels  into  their  horses'  flanks, 
without  remembering  that  they  carried  swords  in  their 
hands.  This  is  known  in  history  as  the  second  Battle 
of  the  Spurs, — not,  as  at  Courtrai,  for  the  number  of 
those  knightly  emblems  taken  off  the  heels  of  the  dead, 
but  for  the  amazing  activity  they  displayed  on  the  heels 
of  the  living.  And,  secondly,  he  could  boast  that  the 
foremost  man  in  Christendom  wore  his  livery  and 
pocketed  his  pay;  for  Maximilian  the  Penniless,  suc- 
cessor of  Charlemagne  and  Constantine  and  Augustus, 
enlisted  and  did  good  service  as  an  English  trooper  at 
a  hundred  crowns  a  day.  Let  Henry  rejoice  in  these 
achievements  while  he  may;  for  the  time  is  drawing 
rear  when  the  old  sovereigns  of  Europe  are  to  be  moved 
out  of  the  way  and  France  and  Spain  are  to  be  governed 
by  younger  men  and  more  ambitious  politicians  than 
himself  Evil  times  indeed  were  at  hand,  when  it 
required  the  strength  of  youth  and  wisdom  of  policy  to 
guide  the  bark  not  only  of  sei)arate  states,  but  of  settled 
law  and  Christian  civilization.  For,  however  pleasant 
it  may  be  to  trace  Henry  through  his  home-career  and 
Francis  and  Charles  in  their  national  rivalries,  Ave  are 
not  to  forget  that  the  real  interest  of  this  century  is 
that  it  is  the  century  of  the  Beformation, — a  movement 


STATE   OF   THE   CHURCH. 


419 


before  whose  overwhelming  importance  the  efforts  of 
the  greatest  individuals  sink  into  insignificance, — an 
upheaving  of  hidden  powers  and  principles,  which  in 
truth  so  altered  all  former  relations  between  man  and 
man  that  it  found  the  most  influential  personage  in 
Europe,  not  in  the  Apostolic  Emperor,  or  the  Christian 
King,  or  the  Defender  of  the  Faith,  but  in  a  burly  friar 
at  Wittenberg,  whose  name  had  never  been  heard 
before. 

Let  us  see  what  was  the  general  condition  of  the  Romish 
Chair  before  the  outburst  of  its  enemies  at  this  time.  One 
thing  is  very  observable :  that  its  claims  to  supremacy  ana 
obedience  were,  ostensibly  at  least,  almost  universally 
Hcquiesced  in.  From  Norway  to  Calabria  the  theory 
of  a  Universal  Church,  divinely  founded  alid  divinely 
sustained,  in  possession  of  superhuman  power  and  un- 
communicated  knowledge,  governed  by  an  infallible 
chief,  and  administered  by  an  uninterrupted  line  of 
pr'ests  and  bishops,  who  had  given  up  the  vanities  of 
the  world,  satisfier  of  doubts,  and  sole  instrument  of 
salvation, — this  seemed  so  perfect  and  so  natural  an 
organization  that  it  had  been  accepted  from  time  im- 
memorial as  incapable  of  denial.  If  a  voice  was  heard 
here  and  there  in  an  Alpine  valley  or  in  a  scholastic 
debating-room  impugning  these  arrangements  or  asking 
proof  from  history  or  revelation,  the  civil  power  was 
let  loose  upon  the  gain  say  er,  with  the  general  consent 
of  orthodox  men,  and  the  Yaudois  were  murdered  with 
sword  and  spear  and  the  inquiring  student  chained  ic 
his  monkish  cell.  The  theory  and  organization  of  the 
Universal  Church  were,  in  fact,  never  so  well  defined  as 
at  the  moment  when  its  reign  was  drawing  to  a  close. 
Nobody  doubted  that  a  general  Father,  clothed  in  in- 
fallible  wisdom,  and  armed  with  powers  directly  com 
mitted  to  him  for  the  guidance  or  punishment  of  man* 


4:20  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

kind,  was  the  Heaven-sent  arbiter  of  differences,  the 
rewarder  of  faithful  kings,  the  corrector  of  unruly 
nations;  and  yet  the  spectacle  was  presented,  to  the 
believers  in  this  ideal,  of  a  series  of  wicked  and  aban- 
doned rulers  sitting  in  Peter's  chair,  and  only  imitating 
the  apostle  in  his  furiousness  and  his  denial;  cardinals 
depraved  and  worldly  beyond  the  example  of  temporal 
princes;  a  priesthood  steeped,  for  the  most  part,  in 
ignorance  and  vice,  and  monks  and  nuns  the  opprohria 
of  all  nations  where  they  were  found.  ISTever  were 
claims  and  performances  brought  into  such  startling 
contrast  before.  The  Pope  was  the  representative  upon 
earth  of  the  Saviour  of  men;  and  he  poisoned  his  guests, 
like  Borgia,  slew  his  opponents,  like  Julius,  or  led  the 
life  of  an  intellectual  epicure,  like  Leo  the  Tenth.  In 
former  times  the  contrariety  between  doctrine  and 
practice  would  have  been  slightly  known  or  easily  re- 
conciled. Few  comparatively  visited  Eome;  cardinals 
were  seldom  seen ;  priests  were  not  more  ignorant  than 
their  parishioners,  and  monks  not  more  wicked  than 
their  admirers.  All  believed  in  the  miraculous  efficacy 
of  the  wares  in  which  even  the  lower  order  of  the 
clergy  dealt,  and  their  rule  in  country  places  was  so  lax, 
their  penances  so  easily  performed  or  commuted,  theii 
relations  with  their  people  so  friendly  and  on  such  equal 
terms,  that  in  the  rural  districts  the  voice  of  complaint 
was  either  unheard  or  neglected.  In  Italy,  the  head- 
quarters of  the  faith,  the  excesses  of  priestly  rule  were 
the  most  glaring  and  wide-spread.  Eome  itself  was 
always  the  seat  of  turbulence  and  disaffection.  The 
lives  of  j)rofessedly  holy  men  were  known,  and  the  vices 
of  popes  and  prelates  pressed  heavily  on  the  people,  who 
^QiQ  the  first  victims  of  their  avarice  or  cruelty.  But 
the  utmost  extent  of  their  indignation  never  reached  to 
a  questioning  of  the  foundation  of  the  power  from  whicb 


RELIGION    OF   THE   ITALIAN. 


421 


they  suffered.  An  Italian  crushed  to  the  earth  by  the 
extortion  of  his  Church,  irritated  perhaps  by  the  per- 
sonal wickedness  of  his  director,  sought  no  escape  from 
Buch  inflictions  in  disbelieving  either  the  temporal  or 
spiritual  authority  of  his  oppressor.  Eather  he  would 
have  looked  with  savage  satisfaction  on  the  fiigot-firo  of 
any  one  who  hinted  that  the  principles  of  his  Church 
required  the  slightest  amendment ;  that  the  absolution 
of  his  sensual  confessor  was  not  altogether  indispen- 
sable ;  that  the  image  he  bowed  down  to  was  common 
wood,  or  that  the  relics  he  worshipped  were  merely 
dead  men^s  bones.  Perhaps,  indeed,  in  those  luxurious 
regions,  a  bare  and  unadorned  worship  would  not  seem 
to  be  worship  at  all.  With  his  impassioned  mind  and 
glowing  fancy,  the  Spaniard  or  Italian  must  pour  out 
his  whole  being  on  the  object  of  his  adoration.  He 
loves  his  patron  saint  with  the  warmth  of  an  earthly 
affection,  and  thinks  he  undervalues  her  virtues  or  her 
claims  if  he  does  not  heap  her  shrine  with  his  offerings 
and  address  her  image  with  rapture.  He  must  make 
external  demonstration  of  his  inward  feelings,  or  no- 
body will  believe  in  their  existence.  The  crouchings 
and  kneelings,  therefore,  which  our  colder  natures  stig- 
matize as  idolatry,  are  to  him  nothing  more  than  the 
outward  manifestation  of  affection  and  thankfulness. 
He  does  the  same  to  his  master  or  his  benefactor  with- 
out degradation  in  the  eyes  of  his  countrymen.  With- 
out these  bowings  and  genuflections  his  conduct  would 
be  thought  ungrateful  and  disrespectful.  That  this 
amount  of  warm-hearted  sincerity  is  wasted  upon  such 
unworthy  objects  as  his  saints  and  relics  is  greatly  to  be 
deplored;  but  wide  allowances  must  be  made  for  pecu- 
liarities of  situation  and  disposition ;  and  we  should  re- 
member that  whereas  in  the  North  a  religion  of  forms 
And  ceremonies  would  be  a  body  without  a  soul,  because 


422 


SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 


there  would  be  no  inward  exaltation  answering  to  the 
outward  manifestation,  the  Southern  heart  sees  a  mean- 
ing where  there  is  none  to  us,  is  conscious  of  a  sense  of 
trust  and  reverence  where  we  only  see  slavishness  and 
imposture,  and  a  feeling  of  divine  consolation  and  hope 
in  services  which  to  us  are  histrionic  and  absurd.  E©- 
ligious  belief,  in  the  sense  of  a  true  and  undivided  faith 
in  the  doctrines  of  Christianity,  had  no  recognised 
existence  at  the  period  we  have  reached.  But  this  ab- 
sence of  religious  belief  was  combined,  however  strange 
the  statement  may  appear,  with  a  most  implicit  trust  in 
the  directions  and  authority  of  the  Church.  Sunny 
skies  might  have  shone  forever  over  the  political  abase- 
ment and  slightly  Christianized  paganism  of  the  inhabit- 
ants of  the  two  peninsulas  and  the  Southeast  of  Europe, 
but  a  cloud  was  about  to  rise  in  the  North  which  dimmed 
them  for  a  time,  but  which,  after  it  burst  in  purifying 
thunder,  has  refreshed  and  cleared  the  atmosphere  of 
the  whole  world. 

The  first  book  that  Guttenberg  published  in  1451  was 
the  Holy  Bible, — in  the  Latin  language,  to  be  sure,  and 
after  the  Yulgate  edition,  but  still  containing,  to  those 
who  could  gather  it,  the  manna  of  the  Word.  Two  years 
after  that,  in  1453,  the  capture  of  Constantinople  by  the 
Turks  had  scattered  the  learning  of  the  Greeks  among 
all  the  nations  of  the  "West.  The  universities  were  soon 
supplied  with  professors,  who  displayed  the  hitherto- 
unexplored  treasures  of  the  language  of  Pericles  and 
Demosthenes.  Everywhere  a  spirit  of  inquiry  began  to 
reawaken,  but  limited  as  yet  to  subjects  of  philosophy 
and  antiquity.  Christianity,  indeed,  had  so  lost  its  hold 
on  the  minds  of  scholars  that  it  was  not  considered 
worth  inquiring  into.  It  was  looked  on  as  a  fable,  and 
only  profitable  as  an  instrument  of  policy.  Erasmus 
was   alarmed  at  the  Gtate  of  feeling  in  1516,  and  ex- 


LUTHER.  423 

pressed  his  belief  that,  if  those  Grecian  studies  ^vcro 
pursued,  the  ancient  deities  would  resume  their  sway. 
But  the  Bible  was  already  reaping  its  appointed  harvest. 
H,8  voice,  lost  in  the  din  of  speculative  philosophies  and 
Iho  dissipation  of  courts,  was  heard  in  obscure  places, 
where  it  never  had  penetrated  before.  '  In  1505,  Luther 
was  twenty-two  years  of  age.  He  had  made  himself  a 
ssholar  oy  attendance  at  schools  where  his  poverty 
almost  debarred  him  from  appearing.  At  Eisenach  ho 
gained  his  bread  by  singing  at  the  richer  inhabitants' 
doors.  Afterwards  he  had  gone  to  Erfurt,  and,  tired  or 
afraid  of  the  world,  anxious  for  opportunities  of  self- 
examination,  and  dissatisfied  with  his  spiritual  state,  he 
entered  the  convent  of  the  Augustines,  and  in  two  years 
more,  in  1507,  became  priest  and  monk.  There  was  an 
amazing  amount  of  goodness  and  simplicity  of  life 
among  the  brotherhood  of  this  community.  Learning 
and  devout  meditation  were  encouraged,  holy  ascetic 
lives  were  led,  the  body  was  kept  under  with  fastings 
and  stripes.  A  Bible  was  open  to  them  all,  but  chained 
to  its  place  in  the  chapel,  and  only  to  be  studied  by 
standing  before  the  desk  on  which  it  lay.  All  these 
things  were  insufficient,  and  Brother  Martin  was  mise- 
rable. His  companions  pitied  and  respected  him.  Stau- 
pitz,  a  man  of  great  rank  in  the  Church,  a  sort  of  in- 
spector-general of  a  large  district,  visited  the  convent, 
and  in  a  moment  was  attracted  by  the  youthful  monk. 
He  conversed  with  him,  soothed  his  agitated  mind,  not 
with  anodynes  from  the  pharmacopoeia  of  the  Church, 
but  from  the  fountain-head  of  the  faith.  He  painted 
God  as  the  forgiver  of  sinners,  the  Father  of  all  men; 
and  Luther  took  some  comfort.  But,  on  going  away, 
the  kind-hearted  Staupitz  gave  the  young  man  a  Bible, 
— a  Bible  all  to  himself,  his  own  property,  to  carry  in 
his  bosom,  to  study  in  his  cell.     His  vocation  was  at 


124 


SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 


once  fixed.  The  Eeformer  felt  his  future  all  before  him, 
like  Achilles  when  he  grasped  the  sword  and  rejected 
the  feminine  toys.  The  books  he  had  taken  with  him 
into  the  monastery  were  Plautus  and  Virgil;  but  he 
studied  plays  and  epics  no  more.  Augustin  and  the 
Bible  supplied  their  place.  Hungering  for  better  things 
than  the  works  of  the  law, — abstinence,  prayer-repe- 
titions, scourgings,  and  all  the  wearisome  routine  of 
mechanical  devotion, — he  dashed  boldly  into  the  other 
extreme,  and  preached  free  grace, — grace  without 
merit,  the  great  doctrine  which  is  called,  theologically, 
"justification  by  faith  alone."  This  had  been  the  main 
theme  of  his  master  Augustin,  and  Luther  now  gave  it 
practical  shape.  In  1510  he  was  sent  on  some  business 
of  his  convent  to  Kome, — to  Eome,  the  head-quarters  of 
the  Church,  the  earthly  residence  of  the  infallible ! 
How  holy  will  be  its  dwellings,  how  gracious  the  words 
of  its  inhabitants !  The  German  monk  saw  nothing  but 
sin  and  infidelity.  In  high  places  as  in  low,  the  taint 
of  corruption  was  polluting  all  the  ajir.  In  terror  and 
dismay,  he  left  the  city  of  iniquity  within  a  fortnight  of 
his  arrival,  and  hurried  back  to  the  peacefulness  of  his 
convent.  "  I  would  not  for  a  hundred  thousand  florins 
have  missed  seeing  Eome,"  he  said,  long  afterwards. 
"  I  should  always  have  felt  an  uneasy  doubt  whether  I 
was  not,  after  all,  doing  injustice  to  the  Pope.  As  it  is, 
I  am  quite  satisfied  on  the  point."  The  Pope  was  Julius 
the  Second,  whose  career  we  followed  in  the  League  of 
Cambrai ;  and  we  may  enter  into  the  surprise  of  Luther 
at  seeing  the  Father  of  the  Faithful  breathing  blood  and 
ruin  to  his  rival  neighbours.  But  the  force  of  early 
education  was  still  unimpaired.  The  Pope  was  Pope, 
and  the  devout  German  thought  of  him  on  his  knees. 
But  in  the  year  1517  a  man  of  the  name  of  Tetzel,  a 
Dominican  of  the   rudest   manners   and   most  brazep 


PAPAL   INDULGENCES. 


426 


oudacitj,  appeared  in  the  market-place  of  Wittenberg, 
ringing  a  bell,  and  hawking  indulgences  from  the  Holy 
See  to  be  sold  to  all  the  faithful.  A  new  Pope  was  on 
the  throne, — the  voluptuous  Leo  the  Tenth.  He  had 
resolved  to  carry  on  the  building  of  the  great  Church 
of  St.  Peter,  and,  having  exhausted  his  funds  in  riotous 
living,  he  sent  round  his  emissaries  to  collect  fresh 
treasures  by  the  sale  of  these  pardons  for  human  sin. 
**Pour  in  your  money,''  cried  Tetzel,  "and  whatever 
crimes  you  have  committed,  or  may  commit,  are  for- 
given !  Pour  in  your  coin,  and  the  souls  of  your  friends 
and  relations  will  fly  out  of  purgatory  the  moment  they 
hear  the  chink  of  your  dollars  at  the  bottom  of  the  box." 
Luther  was  Doctor  of  Divinity,  Professor  in  the  Univer- 
sity, and  pastoral  visitor  of  two  provinces  of  the  empire. 
He  felt  it  was  his  duty  to  interfere.  He  learned  for  the 
first  time  himself  how  far  indulgences  were  supposed  to 
go,  and  shuddered  at  the  profanity  of  the  notion  of 
their  being  of  any  value  whatever.  On  the  festival  of 
All  Saints,  in  November,  1517,  he  read  a  series  of  pro- 
positions against  them  in  the  great  church,  and  startled 
all  Germany  like  a  thunderbolt  with  a  printed  sermon 
on  the  same  subject.  The  press  began  its  work,  and 
people  no  longer  fought  in  darkness.  Nationalities 
were  at  an  end  when  so  wide-embracing  a  subject  was 
treated  by  so  universal  an  agent.  The  monk's  voice 
was  heard  in  all  lands,  even  in  the  walls  of  Eome,  and 
crossed  the  sea,  and  came  in  due  time  to  England. 
"Tush,  tush!  'tis  a  quarrel  of  monks,"  said  Leo  the 
Tenth;  and,  with  an  affectation  of  candour,  he  re- 
marked, "  This  Luther  writes  well :  he  is  a  man  of  fine 
genius." 

Gallant  young  Henry  the  Eighth  thought  it  a  good 
opportunity  to  show  his  talent,  and  meditated  an 
assault  on  the  heretic, — a  curious  duel  between  a  pal« 


^6  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

recluse  aad  the  gayest  prince  in  Christendom  But  tho 
recluse  was  none  the  worse  when  the  book  was  published, 
and  the  prince  earned  from  the  gratitude  of  the  Pope  the 
name  "  Defender  of  the  Faith,"  which  is  still  one  of  the 
titles  of  the  English  crown.  Penniless  Maximilian  looked 
on  well  pleased,  and  wrote  to  a  Saxon  counsellor,  "All 
the  popes  I  have  had  any  thing  to  do  with  have  been 
rogues  and  cheats.  The  game  with  the  priests  is  begin- 
ning. What  your  monk  is  doing  is  not  to  be  despised: 
take  care  of  him.  It  may  happen  that  we  shall  have 
need  of  him."  Luther's  own  prince,  the  Elector  of 
Saxon}^,  w^as  his  firm  friend,  and  on  one  side  or  other 
all  Europe  was  on  the  gaze.  Leo  at  last  perceived 
the  danger,  and  summoned  the  monk  to  Eome.  He 
might  as  well  have  yielded  in  the  struggle  at  once, 
for  from  Eome  he  never  could  have  returned  alive. 
He  consented,  however,  to  appear  before  the  Legate 
at  Augsburg,  attended  by  a  strong  body-guard  fur- 
nished by  the  Elector,  and  held  his  ground  against 
the  threats  and  promises  of  the  Cardinal  of  Cajeta.  But 
Maximilian  carried  his  poverty  and  disappointment  to 
the  grave  in  1519 ;  and  when  Leo  saw  the  safe  accession 
of  his  successor  Charles  the  Fifth,  the  faithful  servant 
of  St.  Peter,  he  pushed  matters  with  a  higher  hand 
against  the  daring  innovator.  Brother  Martin,  how- 
ever, was  unmoved.  He  would  not  retreat;  he  even  ad- 
vanced in  his  course,  and  wrote  to  the  Pope  himself  an 
account  of  the  iniquities  of  Eome.  "  You  have  three  or 
four  cardinals,"  he  says,  "of  learning  and  faith;  but 
what  are  these  three  or  four  in  so  vast  a  crowd  of  in- 
fidels and  reprobates  ?  The  days  of  Eome  are  numbered, 
and  the  anger  of  God  has  been  breathed  forth  upon  her. 
She  hates  councils,  she  dreads  reforms,  and  w^ill  not 
hear  of  a  check  being  placed  on  her  desperate  impiety." 
This  was  a  dangerous  man  to  meet  wuth  such  devices  as 


DIET   OF   WORMS. 


427 


biiils  and  interdicts.  Charles  determined  to  try  harshei 
measures,  and  summoned  him  to  appear  at  a  Diet  of  the 
States  held  in  Worms.  The  emperor  was  now  twenty- 
one  years  old.  His  sceptre  stretched  over  the  half  of 
Europe,  and  across  the  great  sea  to  the  golden  realm  of 
Mexico.  Martin  begged  a  new  gown  from  the  not  very 
lavish  Elector,  and  went  in  a  sort  of  chariot  to  the  ap- 
pointed city, — serene  and  confident,  for  he  had  a  safe- 
conduct  from  the  emperor  and  various  princes,  and 
trusted  in  the  goodness  of  his  cause.  Such 
a  scene  never  occurred  in  any  ago  of  the  world 
as  was  presented  when  the  assemblage  met.  All  the 
peers  and  potentates  of  the  German  Empire,  presided 
over  by  the  most  powerful  ruler  that  ever  had  been 
known  in  Europe,  were  gathered  to  hear  the  trial  and 
condemnation  of  a  thin,  wan-visaged  young  man,  dressed 
in  a  monk*«  gown  and  hood  and  worn  with  the  fatigues 
and  hazards  of  his  recent  life.  "  Yet  prophet-like  that 
lone  one  stood,  with  dauntless  words  and  high,"  and 
answered  all  questions  with  force  and  modesty.  But 
answers  were  not  what  the  Diet  required,  and  retracta- 
tion was  far  from  Luther's  mind.  So  the  Chancellor  of 
Treves  came  to  him  and  said,  "Martin,  thou  art  dis- 
obedient to  his  Imperial  Majesty:  wherefore  depart 
hence  under  the  safe-conduct  he  has  given  thee."  And 
the  monk  departed.  As  he  was  nearing  his  destination, 
and  was  passing  through  a  wood  alone,  some  horsemen 
seized  his  person,  dressed  him  in  military  garb,  and  put 
on  him  a  false  beard.  They  then  mounted  him  on  a  led 
liorse  and  rode  rapidly  away.  His  friends  were  anxious 
about  his  fate,  for  a  dreadful  sentence  had  been  uttered 
against  him  by  the  emperor  on  the  day  when  his  safe- 
conduct  expired,  forbidding  any  one  to  sustain  or  shel- 
ter him,  and  ordering  all  persons  to  arrest  and  bring 
b:m  into  prison  to  await   the  judgment   he   deserved 


128 


SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 


People  thought  he  had  been  waylaid  and  killed^  or  at  ali 
events  sent  into  a  dungeon.  Meantime  he  was  living 
peaceably  and  comfortably  in  the  castle  of  Wartburg, 
to  which  he  had  been  conveyed  in  this  mystericua 
manner  by  his  friend  the  Elector, — safe  from  the  machi- 
nations of  his  enemies,  and  busily  engaged  in  his  im- 
mortal translation  of  the  Bible. 

The  movement  thus  communicated  \)y  Luther  knew 
no  pause  nor  end.  It  soon  ceased  to  be  a  merely 
national  excitement  caused  by  local  circumstances,  and 
became  the  one  great  overwhelming  question  of  the 
time.  Every  thing  was  brought  into  its  vortex:  how- 
ever distant  might  be  its  starting-point,  to  this  great 
central  idea  it  was  sure  to  attach  itself  at  last.  Invo- 
luntarily, unconsciously,  unwillingly,  every  government 
found  that  the  Eeformation  formed  part  of  its  scheme 
and  policy.  One  nation,  and  one  only,  had  the  clear 
eye  and  firm  hand  to  make  it  ostensibly,  and  of  its  de- 
liberate choice,  the  guide  and  landmark  in  its  dangerous 
and  finally  triumphant  career.  This  was  England, — 
not  when  under  the  degrading  domination  of  its  Henry 
or  the  heavy  hand  of  its  Mary,  but  under  the  skilful 
piloting  of  the  great  Elizabeth,  the  first  of  rulers  who 
seems  to  have  perceived  that  submission  to  a  foreign 
priest  is  a  political  error  on  the  part  both  of  kings  and 
subjects,  and  that  occupation  by  a  foreign  army  is  not 
more  subversive  of  freedom  and  independence  than  the 
supremacy  of  a  foreign  Church.  Hitherto  England  had 
been  nearly  divided  from  the  whole  world,  and  was 
merely  one  of  the  distant  satellites  that  revolved  on  the 
outside  of  the  European  system,  the  centre  of  which 
was  Home.  She  was  now  to  burn  with  light  of  her 
own.  The  Continent,  indeed,  at  the  commencement  of 
the  Eeformation,  seemed  almost  in  a  state  of  dissolu- 
tion.    In  1529  disunion  had  attained  such  a  pitch  in  th« 


LEAGUE   OF   SMALCALDE.  429 

Eifipire  that  the  different  princes  were  ranged  on  hostile 
Bides.  At  the  Diet  of  Spires,  in  this  year,  the  name  of 
Protestant  had  been  assumed  by  the  opponents  of  the 
excesses  and  errors  of  the  Church  of  Eome.  At  the 
same  time  that  the  religious  unity  was  thus  finally 
thrown  off,  the  Turks  were  thundering  at  the  Eastern 
gates  of  Europe,  and  Solyman  of  Constantinople  laid 
iiege  to  Vienna.  France  was  exhausted  with  her  in- 
ternal troubles.  Spain  came  to  the  rescue  of  the  out- 
raged faith,  and  made  heresy  punishable  with  death 
throughout  all  her  dominions.  While  the  Netherlands, 
against  which  this  was  directed,  was  groaning  under 
this  new  infliction,  disorder  seemed  to  extend  over  the 
solid  earth  itself  There  were  earthquakes  and  great 
storms  in  many  lands.  Lisbon  was  shaken  into  ruins, 
with  a  loss  of  thirty  thousand  inhabitants;  and  the 
dykes  of  Holland  were  overwhelmed  by  a  prodigious 
rising  of  the  sea,  and  four  hundred  thousand  people 
were  drowned. 

Preparations  were  made  in  all  quarters  for  a  great 
and  momentous  struggle:  nobody  could  tell  where  it 
would  break  forth  or  where  it  would  end.  And  ever 
and  anon  Luther's  rallying-cry  was  heard  in  answer  to 
the  furious  denunciations  of  cardinals  and  popes.  In- 
terests get  parcelled  out  in  so  many  separate  portions 
that  it  is  impossible  to  unravel  the  state  of  affairs  with 
any  clearness.  We  shall  only  notice  that,  in  1531,  the 
famous  league  of  Smalcalde  first  embodied  Protestantism 
in  its  national  and  lay  constitution  by  the  banding  to- 
gether of  nine  of  the  sovereign  princes  of  Germany,  and 
eleven  free  cities,  in  armed  defence,  if  needed,  of  their 
religious  belief  Where  is  the  fiery  Henry  of  England, 
with  his  pen  or  sword?  A  very  changed  man  from 
what  we  saw  him  only  thirteen  years  ago.  He  has  no 
pen  now,  and  his  sword  is  kept  for  his  discontented  sub- 


L'dO 


SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 


jects  at  home.  In  1534,  King  and  Lord«  and  Commons, 
in  Parliament  assembled,  threw  off  the  supremacy  of 
Eome,  and  Henry  is  at  last  a  king,  for  his  courts  hold 
cognizance  of  all  causes  within  the  realm,  whether 
ecclesiastical  or  civil.  Everybody  knows  the  steps  by 
which  this  embodied  selfishness  achieved  his  emancipa- 
tion from  a  dominant  Church.  It  little  concerns  us 
now,  except  as  a  question  o^  historic  curiosity,  what  his 
motives  were  Judging  from  the  analogy  of  all  his 
other  actions,  we  should  say  they  were  bad;  but  by 
some  means  or  other  the  evil  deeds  of  this  man  were 
generally  productive  of  benefit  to  his  country.  He  cast 
off  the  Pope  that  he  might  be  freed  from  a  disagreeable 
wife;  but  as  the  Pope  whom  he  rejected  was  the  servant 
of  Charles,  (the  nephew  of  the  repudiated  queen,)  he 
found  that  he  had  freed  his  kingdom  at  the  same  time 
from  its  degrading  vassalage  to  the  puppet  of  a  rival 
monarch.  He  dissolved  the  monasteries  in  England  for 
the  purpose  of  grasping  their  wealth ;  but  the  country 
found  he  had  at  the  same  time  delivered  it  from  a  swarm 
of  idle  and  mischievous  corporations,  which  in  no  long 
time  would  have  swallowed  up  the  land.  Their  revenues 
were  immense,  and  the  extent  of  their  domains  almost 
incredible.  Before  people  had  recovered  from  their 
disgust  at  the  hateful  motives  of  their  tyrant's  beha- 
viour, the  results  of  it  became  apparent  in  the  elevation 
of  the  finest  class  of  the  English  population;  for  the 
"  bold  peasantry,  their  country's  pride,"  began  to  esta- 
blish their  independent  holdings  on  the  parcelled-out 
territories  of  the  monks  and  nuns.  Vast  tracts  of 
ground  were  thrown  open  to  the  competition  of  lay  pro- 
prietors. Even  the  poorest  was  not  without  hope  oi 
becoming  an  owner  of  the  soil;  nay,  the  released  estates 
were  so  plentiful  that  in  Elizabeth's  reign  an  act  was 
passed  making  it  illegal  for  a  man  to  build  a  cottage 


CHANGED   ASPECT   OF   EUROPE. 


43i 


unless  he  laid  four  acres  of  land  thereto.''  The  cot- 
tager, therefore,  became  a  small  farmer;  and  small 
farmers  were  the  defence  of  England ;  and  the  defence 
of  England  was  the  safety  of  freedom  and  religion 
throughout  the  world.  There  were  some  hundred  thou- 
sands of  those  landed  cottagers  and  smaller  gentry  and 
great  proprietors  established  by  this  most  respectable 
Bacrilege  of  Ilenry  the  Eighth,  and  for  the  sake  of  these 
excellent  consequences  we  forgive  him  his  pride  and 
cruelty  and  all  his  faults.  But  Henry's  work  was  done, 
and  in  January,  1547,  he  died.  The  rivals  with  whom 
he  started  on  the  race  of  life  were  still  alive ;  but  life 
was  getting  dark  and  dreary  with  both  of  them. 
Francis  was  no  longer  the  hero  of  "  The  Field  of  the 
Cloth-of-Gold,"  conqueror  of  Marignano,  the  gallant 
captive  of  Pavia,  or  the  winner  of  all  hearts.  He  was 
worn  out  with  a  life  of  great  vicissitudes,  and  heard 
with  ominous  foreboding  the  news  of  Henry's  death. 
A  fate  seemed  to  unite  them  in  all  those  years  of 
revelry  and  hate  and  friendship,  and  in  a  few  weeks  the 
March  11  ^ost  chivalrous  and  generous  of  the  Yalois 
1547.  followed  the  most  tyrannical  of  the  Tudors  to 
the  tomb.  A  year  before  this,  the  Monk  of  Wittenberg, 
now  the  renowned  and  married  Dr.  Martin  Luther,  had 
left  a  place  vacant  which  no  man  could  fill;  and  now 
of  all  those  combatants  Charles  was  the  sole  survivor. 
Selfish  as  Henry,  dissolute  as  Francis,  obstinate  as  Mar- 
tin, his  race  also  was  drawing  to  a  close.  But  the  play 
was  played  out  before  these  chief  performers  withdrew 
All  Europe  had  changed  its  aspect.  The  England,  the 
France,  the  Empire,  of  five-and-twenty  years  before 
bad  utterly  passed  away.  New  objects  were  filling 
men's  minds,  new  principles  of  policy  were  regulating 
states.  Protestantism  was  an  established  fact,  and  the 
Treaty  of  Passau  in  1552  gave  liberty  and  equality  to 


*^2  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

the  professors  of  the  new  faith.  Charles  was  sagacious 
though  heartless  as  a  ruler,  but  an  unredeemed  bigot  as 
an  individual  man.  The  necessities  of  his  condition,  by 
which  he  was  forced  to  give  toleration  to  the  enemies 
of  the  Church,  weighed  upon  his  heart.  A  younger 
hand  and  bloodier  disposition,  he  thought,  were  needed 
to  regain  the  ground  he  had  been  obliged  to  yield;  and 
in  Philip  his  son  he  perceived  all  these  requirements 
fulfilled.  When  he  looked  round,  he  saw  nothing  to 
give  him  comfort  in  his  declining  years.  "War  was 
going  on  in  Hungary  against  the  still  advancing  Turks; 
war  was  raging  in  Lorraine  between  his  forces  and  the 
French ;  Italy,  the  land  of  volcanoes,  was  on  the  eve  of 
outbreak  and  anarchy ;  and,  thundering  out  defiance  of 
the  Imperial  power  and  the  Christian  Cross,  the  guns 
of  the  Ottoman  fleet  were  heard  around  the  shores  of 
Sicily  and  up  to  the  Bay  of  Naples.  The  emperor  was 
faint  and  weary :  his  armies  were  scattered  and  dispirit- 
ed; his  fleets  were  unequal  to  their  enemy:  so  in  1556 
he  resigned  his  pompous  title  of  monarch  of  Spain  and 
the  Indies,  with  all  their  dependencies,  to  his  son,  and 
the  empire  to  his  brother  Ferdinand,  who  was  already 
King  of  Hungary  and  Bohemia  and  hereditary  Duke  of 
Austria ;  and  then,  with  the  appearance  of  resignation, 
out  his  soul  embittered  by  anger  and  disaj^pointment, 
he  retired  to  the  Convent  of  St.  Just,  where  he  gorged 
himself  into  insanity  with  gluttonies  which  would  have 
disgraced  Yitellius,  and  amused  himself  by  interfering 
in  state  afl'airs  which  he  had  forsworn,  and  making 
watches  which  he  could  not  regulate,  and  going  through 
the  revolting  farce  of  a  rehearsal  of  his  funeral,  with  his 
body  in  the  coffin  and  the  monks  of  the  monastery  for 
mourners.  Those  theatrical  lamentations  were  probably 
as  sincere  as  those  which  followed  his  real  demise  in 
1 558 ;  for  when  he  surrendered  the  power  which  made 


THE   REFORMATION. 


433 


him  respected  he  gave  evidence  only  of  the   qualities 
which  made  him  disliked. 

The  Eeformation,  you  remember,  is  the  characteristic 
of  this  century.  We  have  traced  it  in  Germany  to  its 
recognition  as  a  separate  and  liberated  faith.  In  England 
we  are  going  to  see  Protestantism  established  and  tri- 
umphant. Bat  not  yet;  for  we  have  first  to  notice  a 
period  when  Protestantism  seems  at  its  last  hour,  when 
Mary,  wife  of  the  bigot  Philip,  and  true  and  honourable 
daughter  of  the  Church,  is  determined  to  restore  her 
nation  to  the  Eomish  chair,  or  die  in  the  holy  attempt. 
"We  are  not  going  into  the  minutia)  of  this  dreadful  time, 
or  to  excite  your  feelings  with  the  accounts  of  the  burn- 
ings and  torturings  of  the  dissenters  from  the  queen's 
belief.  None  of  us  are  ignorant  of  the  cruelty  of  those 
proceedings,  or  have  read  unmoved  the  sad  recital  of 
the  martyrdom  of  the  bishops  and  of  such  men  as  the 
joyous  and  innocent  Rowland  Taylor  of  Hadleigh. 
Men^s  hearts  did  not  become  hardened  by  these  sights. 
Rather  they  melted  with  compassion  towards  the  daunt- 
less sufferers ;  and,  though  the  hush  of  terror  kept  the 
masses  of  the  people  silent,  great  thoughts  were  rising 
in  the  general  mind,  and  toleration  ripened  even  under 
the  heat  of  the  Smithfield  fires.  Attempts  have  been 
made  to  blacken  Mary  beyond  her  demerits  and  to 
whiten  her  beyond  her  deservings.  Protestants  have 
denied  her  the  virtues  she  unquestionably  possessed, — 
truthfulness,  firmness,  conscientiousness,  .  and  unim- 
peachable morals.  Her  panegyrists  take  higher  ground, 
and  claim  for  her  the  noblest  qualifications  both  as 
queen  and  woman, — ^patriotism,  love  of  her  people,  ful- 
filment of  all  her  duties,  and  exquisite  tenderness  of  dis- 
pC'Bition.  It  will  be  sufficient  for  us  to  look  at  her 
actions,  and  we  will  leave  her  secret  sentiments  alone. 
We  shall  only  say  that  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  th© 
19 


<34  SIXTEENTH    CENTURY. 

plea  of  conscientiousness  is  admissible  in  such  a  caso 
If  perverted  reasoning  or  previous  education  has  made 
a  Thug  feel  it  a  point  of  conscience  to  put  his  throttling 
instrument  under  a  quiet  traveller's  throat,  the  con- 
scientious belief  of  the  performer  that  his  act  is  for  the 
good  of  the  sufferer's  soul  will  scarcely  save  him  from 
the  gallows.  On  the  contrary,  a  conscientious  persist- 
ence in  what  is  manifestly  wrong  should  be  an  aggrava- 
tion of  the  crime,  for  it  gives  an  appearance  of  respect- 
ability to  atrocity,  and,  when  punishment  overtakes  the 
wrong-doers,  makes  the  Thug  an  honoured  martyr  to 
his  opinions,  instead  of  a  convicted  felon  for  his  mis- 
deeds. Let  us  hope  that  the  rights  of  conscience  will 
never  be  pleaded  in  defence  of  cruelty  or  persecution. 

The  restoration  of  England  to  the  obedience  of  the 
Church,  the  marriage  of  Mary,  the  warmest  partisan  of 
Popery,  with  Philip,  the  fanatical  oppressor  of 
*  the  reformed, — ^these  must  have  raised  the  hopes 
of  Eome  to  an  extraordinary  pitch.  But  greater  as  a 
support,  and  more  reliable  than  queens  or  kings,  was  the 
Society  of  the  Jesuits,  which  at  this  time  demonstrated 
its  attachment  to  the  Holy  See,  and  devoted  itself 
blindly,  remorselessly,  unquestioning,  to  the  defence  of 
the  old  faith.  Having  sketched  the  rise  of  Luther,  a 
companion-picture  is  required  of  the  fortunes  of  Igna- 
tius Loyola.  We  hinted  that  a  Biscayan  soldier, 
wounded  at  the  siege  of  Pampeluna  in  Spain,  divided 
the  notice  of  Europe  with  the  poor  Austin  Friar  of 
Wittenberg.  Enthusiasm,  rising  almost  into  madness^ 
was  no  bar,  in  the  case  jf  this  wonderful  Spaniard,  to 
the  possession  of  faculties  for  government  and  organiza- 
tion which  have  never  been  surpassed.  Shut  out  by  the 
lameness  resulting  from  his  wound  from  the  struggles 
of  worldly  and  soldierly  ambition,  he  gave  full  way  to 
Uio  mystic  exaltation  of  his  Southern  disposition.     He 


THE   JESUITS. 


485 


devoted  himself  as  knight  and  champion  to  the  Virgin, 
heard  with  contempt  and  horror  of  the  efforts  made  to 
deny  the  omnipotence  of  the  Chair  of  Eome,  and  swore 
to  be  its  defender.  Others  of  similar  sentiments  joined 
him  in  his  crusade  against  innovation.  A  company  of 
self-denying,  self-sacrificing  men  began,  and,  adding  to 
the  previous  laws  of  their  order  a  vow  of  unqualified 
submission  to  the  Pope,  they  were  recognised  by  a  bull, 
and  the  Society  of  Jesus  became  the  strongest 
'  and  most  remarkable  institution  of  modern 
times.  Through  all  varieties  of  fortune,  in  exile  and 
imprisonment,  and  even  in  dissolution,  their  oath  of  un- 
inquiring,  unhesitating  obedience  to  the  papal  command 
has  never  been  broken.  "With  Protean  variety  of  ap- 
pearance, but  unvarying  identity  of  intention,  these 
soldiers  of  St.  Peter  are  as  relentless  to  others,  and  as 
regardless  of  themselves,  as  the  body-guard  of  the  old 
Assassins.  No  degradation  is  too  servile,  no  place  toe 
distant,  no  action  too  revolting,  for  these  unreasoning 
instruments  of  power.  Wilfully  surrendering  the  right 
of  judgment  and  the  feelings  of  conscience  into  the 
hands  of  their  superior,  there  is  no  anethod  by  law  or 
argument  of  regulating  their  conduct.  The  one  prin- 
ciple of  submission  has  swallowed  up  all  the  rest,  and 
fulfilment  of  that  duty  ennobles  the  iniquitous  deeds  by 
which  it  is  shown.  Other  societies  put  a  clause,  either 
by  words  or  implication,  in  their  promise  of  obedience, 
limiting  it  to  things  which  are  just  and  proper.  This 
limit  is  ostentatiously  abrogated  by  the  followers  of 
Loyola.  The  merit  of  obeying  an  order  to  slay  an 
enemy  of  the  Church  more  than  compensates  for  the 
guilt  of  the  murder.  In  other  orders  a  homicide  is 
looked  upon  with  horror ;  in  this,  a  Jesuit  who  kills  a 
bereticai  kixig  hy  command  of  his  chiefs  is  venerated  as 
1  saint.     Against  practices  and  feelings  like  these  you 


*36  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

can  neitbcr  reason  nor  be  on  your  guard.  In  all  king, 
doms,  accordingly,  at  some  time  or  other,  the  existence 
of  the  order  has  been  found  inconsistent  with  the  safety 
of  the  State,  and  it  has  been  dissolved  by  the  civil  power. 
The  moment,  however,  the  Church  regains  its  hold,  the 
Jesuits  are  sure  to  be  restored.  The  alliance,  indeed,  is 
indispensable,  and  the  mutual  aid  of  the  Order  and  of 
the  Papacy  a  necessity  of  their  existence.  Incorporated 
in  1540,  the  brothers  of  the  Company  of  Jesus  consi- 
dered the  defections  of  the  Reformation  in  a  fair  way  of 
being  compensated  when  the  death  of  our  little,  cold- 
hearted,  self-willed  Edward  the  Sixth — a  Henry  the 
Eighth  in  the  bud — left  the  throne  in  1553  to  Mary,  a 
Henry  the  Eighth  full  blown.  When  nearly  five  years 
of  conscientious  truculence  had  shown  the  earnestness 

,,,„   of  this  unhappy  woman's  belief,  the  accession 
A.D.  lo58.     _  V,,.     -      -  V  ,  '  .       ,  . 

of  Elizabeth  inaugurated  a  new  system  m  this 

country,  from  which  it  has  never  departed  since  without 
a  perceptible  loss  both  of  happiness  and  power.  A 
strictly  home  and  national  policy  was  immediately  esta- 
blished by  this  most  remarkable  of  our  sovereigns,  and 
pursued  through  good  report  and  evil  report,  sometimes 
at  the  expense  of  her  feelings — if  she  was  so  little  of  a 
Tudor  as  to  have  any — of  tenderness  and  compassion, 
sometimes  at  the  expense — and  here  she  was  Tudor 
enough  to  have  very  acute  sensations  indeed — of  her 
personal  and  official  dignity,  but  always  with  the  one 
object  of  establishing  a  great  united  and  irresistible  bul- 
wark against  foreign  oppression  and  domestic  disunion. 
It  shows  how  powerful  was  her  impression  upon  the 
course  of  European  history,  that  her  character  is  as 
fiercely  canvassed  at  this  day  as  in  the  speech  of  her 
contemporaries.  Nobody  feels  as  if  Elizabeth  was  a 
personage  removed  from  us  by  three  hundred  years. 
We  discuss  her  actions,  and  even  argue  about  her  looks 


ELIZABETH.  *87 

and  manners,  as  if  she  had  lived  in  our  own  time.  And 
this  is  the  reason  Tvhy  such  divergent  judgments  are 
pronounced  on  a  person  who,  more  than  any  other 
ruler,  united  the  opinions  of  her  subjects  during  the 
whole  of  her  long  and  agitated  life.  Her  acts  remain, 
but  her  judges  are  different.  If  we  could  throw  our- 
selves with  the  reality  of  circumstance  as  well  as  tho 
vividness  of  feeling  into  the  period  in  which  she  moved 
and  governed,  we  should  come  to  truer  decisions  on  the 
points  submitted  to  our  view.  But  if  we  look  with  the 
refinements  of  the  present  time,  and  the  speculative 
niceties  permissible  in  questions  which  have  no  direct 
bearing  on  our  prosperity  and  safety,  we  shall  see  much 
to  disapprove  of,  which  escaped  the  notice,  or  oven  excited 
the  admiration,  of  the  people  who  saw  what  tremendous 
arbitraments  were  on  the  scale.  If  we  were  told  that  a 
cold-blooded  individual  had  placed  on  one  occasion  some 
murderous  weapons  on  a  height,  and  then  requested  a 
number  of  his  friends  to  stand  before  them,  while  some 
unsuspecting  persons  came  up  in  that  direction,  and 
then,  suddenly  telling  his  companions  to  stand  on  one 
side,  had  sent  bullets  hissing  and  crashing  through  the 
gentlemen  advancing  to  him,  you  would  shudder  with 
disgust  at  such  atrocious  cruelty,  till  you  were  told  that 
the  cold-blooded  individual  was  the  Duke  of  Wellington, 
and  the  advancing  gentlemen  the  French  Old  Guard  at 
Waterloo.  And  in  the  same  way,  if  we  read  of  Eliza- 
beth interfering  in  Scotland,  domineering  at  home,  and 
bellicose  abroad,  let  us  inquire,  before  we  condemn, 
whether  she  was  in  her  duty  during  those  operations,— 
whether,  in  fact,  she  was  resisting  an  assault,  or  capri 
ciously  and  unjustifiably  opening  her  batteries  on  the 
innocent  and  unprepared.  Fiery-hearted,  strong-handed 
Scotchmen  are  ready  to  fight  at  this  time  for  the  im- 
maculate purity  and  sinless  martyrdom  of  their  beau* 


*38  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

tifiil  Mary,  and  sturdy  Englishmen  start  up  with  as  bold 
a  countenance  in  defence  of  good  Queen  Bess.  It  ia 
not  to  be  doubted  that  a  roll-call  as  numerous  as  that  of 
Bannockburn  or  Flodden  could  be  mustered  on  this 
quarrel  of  three  centuries  ago ;  but  the  fight  is  needless. 
The  points  of  view  are  so  different  that  a  verdict  can 
never  be  given  on  the  merits  of  the  two  personages 
principally  engaged;  but  we  think  an  unprejudiced 
examination  of  the  course  of  Elizabeth's  policy  in  Scot- 
land, and  her  treatment  of  her  rival,  will  establish 
certain  facts  which  neither  party  can  gainsay. 

1st.  Erom  this  it  will  result,  that,  to  keep  reformed 
England  secure,  it  was  indispensable  to  have  reformed 
Scotland  on  her  side. 

2d.  That,  in  order  to  have  Scotland  either  reformed 
or  on  her  side,  it  was  indispensable  to  render  powerless 
a  popish  queen, — a  queen  who  was  supported  as  legiti- 
mate inheritor  of  England  by  the  Pope  and  Philip  of 
Spain,  and  the  I^ing  and  princes  of  France. 

3d.  That  Elizabeth  had  a  right,  by  all  the  laws  of  self- 
preservation,  to  sustain  by  every  legal  and  peaceable 
means  that  party  in  Scotland  which  was  de  facto  the 
government  of  the  country,  and  which  promised  to  be 
most  useful  to  the  objects  she  had  in  view.  Those  ob- 
jects have  already  been  named, — ^peace  and  security  for 
the  Protestant  religion,  and  the  honour  and  indepen- 
dence of  the  whole  British  realm. 

To  gain  these  ends,  who  denies  that  she  bribed  and 
ouUied  and  deceived  ? — ^that  she  degraded  the  Scottish 
nobles  by  alternate  promises  and  threats,  and  weakened 
the  Scottish  crown  by  encouraging  its  enemies,  both 
ecclesiastical  and  civil  ?  In  prudishly  finding  fault  with 
these  proceedings,  we  forget  the  Scotch,  French,  Spanish, 
popish,  emissaries  who  were  let  loose  upon  England;  the 
plots  at  home,  the  scowling  messages  from  abroad  j  the 


MARY   OF  SCOTLAND.  439 

excommunications  uttered  from  Eome ;  thij  massacre  of 
the  Protestants  gloried  in  in  France,  and  the  vast  navies 
and  i  inmense  armies  gathering  against  the  devoted  Isl^ 
fi'om  all  the  coasts  and  provinces  of  Spain. 

In  1568,  after  the  defeat  of  the  queen's  party  at 
Langside,  Mary  threw  herself  on  the  pity  and  pro- 
toction  of  Elizabeth,  and  was  kept  in  honourable  safety 
for  many  years.  She  did  not  allow  her  to  collect  parti- 
sans for  the  recovery  of  her  kingdom,  nor  to  cabal 
against  the  government  which  had  expelled  her.  To 
do  so  would  not  have  been  to  shelter  a  fugitive,  but  to 
declare  war  on  Scotland.  In  1848,  Louis  Philippe, 
chased  by  the  revolutionists  of  Paris,  came  over  to 
England.  lie  was  kept  in  honourable  retirement.  He 
was  not  allowed  to  cabal  against  his  former  subjects, 
nor  to  threaten  their  policy.  To  do  so  would  not  have 
been  to  shelter  a  fugitive,  but  to  declare  war  on  France. 
Even  in  the  case  of  the  earlier  Bourbons,  we  permitted 
no  gatherings  of  forces  on  their  behalf,  and  did  not  en- 
courage their  followers  to  molest  the  settled  govern- 
ment,— no,  not  when  the  throne  of  France  was  filled  by 
an  enemy  and  we  were  at  deadly  war  with  Napoleon. 
But  Mary  was  put  to  death.  A  sad  story,  and  very 
melancholy  to  read  in  quiet  drawing-rooms  with  Bri- 
tannia ruling  the  waves  and  keeping  all  danger  from 
our  coasts.  But  in  1804,  if  Louis  the  Eighteenth  or 
Charles  the  Tenth,  instead  of  eating  the  bread  of  charity 
in  peace,  had  been  detected  in  conspiracy  with  our 
enemies,  in  corresponding  with  foreign  emissaries,  when 
a  thousand  flat-bottomed  boats  were  marshalling  for 
our  invasion  at  Boulogne,  and  Brest  and  Cherbourg  and 
Toulon  were  crowded  with  ships  and  sailors  to  protect 
the  flotilla,  it  needs  no  great  knowledge  of  character  to 
pronounce  that  English  William  Pitt  and  Scottish 
H&rry  Dundas  would  have   had  the  royal  Bourbon's 


440  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

head  on  a  block,  or  his  body  on  Tyburn-tree,  in  spite  of 
all  the  romance  and  eloquence  in  the  world. 

Mary's  guilt  or  innocence  of  the  charges  brought 
against  her  in  her  relations  with  Darnley  and  Bothwell 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  treatment  she  received 
from  Elizabeth,  She  was  not  amenable  to  English  law 
for  any  thing  she  did  in  Scotland,  nor  was  she  con- 
demned for  any  thing  but  treasonable  practices  which 
it  was  impossible  to  deny.  She  certainly  owed  submis- 
sion and  allegiance  to  the  English  crown  while  she  lived 
under  its  protection.  Let  us  indulge  our  chivalrous 
generosity,  and  enjoy  delightful  poems  in  defence  of 
an  unfortunate  and  beautiful  sovereign,  by  believing 
that  the  blots  upon  her  fame  were  the  aspersions  of 
malignity  and  political  baseness :  the  great  fact  remains, 
that  it  was  an  indispensable  incident  to  the  security  of 
both  the  kingdoms  that  she  should  be  deprived  of 
authority,  and  finally,  as  the  storm  darkened,  and  de- 
rived all  its  perils  from  her  conspiracies  against  the 
State  and  breaches  of  the  law,  that  she  should  be  de- 
prived of  life.  Far  more  sweeping  measures  were  pur- 
sued and  defended  by  the  enemies  of  Elizabeth  abroad. 
Present  forever,  like  a  skeleton  at  a  feast,  must  have 
been  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew  in  the  thoughts 
of  every  Protestant  in  Europe,  and  most  vividly  of  all 
in  those  of  the  English  queen.  That  great  blow  was 
meant  to  be  a  warning  to  heretics  wherever  they  were 
found,  and  in  olden  times  and  more  revengeful  disposi- 
tions might  have  been  an  excuse  for  similar  atrocity  on 
the  other  side.  The  Bartholomew  massacre  and  the 
Armada  are  the  two  great  features  of  the  latter  part  of 
this  century;  and  they  are  both  so  well  known  that  it 
will  be  sufiicient  to  recall  them  in  a  very  few  words. 

This  massacre  was  no  chance-sprung  event,  like  an 
ordinary  popular  rising,  but  had  been  matured  for  many 


ST.  BARTHOLOMEW.  441 

years.  The  Council  of  Trent,  whicli  met  in  1545  and 
continued  its  sittings  till  1563,  had  devoted  those  eighteen 
years  to  codifying  the  laws  of  the  Catholic  Church.  A 
definite,  clear,  consistent  system  was  established,  and 
acknowledged  as  the  religious  and  ecclesiastical  faith  of 
Christendom.  Men  were  not  now  left  to  a  painful 
gathering  of  the  sentiments  and  rescripts  of  popes  and 
doctors  out  of  varying  and  scattered  writings.  Here 
were  the  statutes  at  large,  minutely  indexed  and  easy 
of  reference.  From  these  many  texts  could  be  gathered 
which  justified  any  method  of  diffusing  the  true  belief 
or  exterminating  the  false.  And  accordingly,  a  short 
time  after  the  close  of  the  Council,  an  interview  took 
place  between  two  personages,  of  very  sinister  augury 
for  the  Protestant  cause.  Catherine  de  Medicis  and  the 
Duke  of  Alva  met  at  Bayonne  in  1565.  In  this  consul- 
tation great  things  were  discussed;  and  it  was  decided 
by  the  wickedest  woman  and  harshest  man  in  Europe 
that  government  could  not  be  safe  nor  religion  honoured 
unless  by  the  introduction  of  the  Inquisition  and  a 
general  massacre  of  heretics  in  every  land.  A  few 
months  later  saw  the  ferocious  Alva  beginning  his 
bloodthirsty  career  in  the  Netherlands,  in  which  he 
boasted  he  had  put  eighteen  thousand  Hollanders  to 
death  on  the  scaffold  in  five  years.  Catherine  also  pon- 
dered his  lessons  in  her  heart,  and  when  seven  years 
had  passed,  and  the  Huguenots  were  still  unsubdued, 
she  persuaded  her  son  Charles  the  Ninth  that  the  time 
was  come  to  establish  his  kingdom  in  righteousness  by 
the  indiscriminate  murder  of  all  the  Protestants.  An 
occasion  was  found  in  1572,  when  the  marriage  of  Henry 
of  Navarre,  afterwards  the  best-loved  king  of  France, 
with  the  Princess  Margaret  de  Yalois,  held  out  a  pros- 
pect of  soothing  the  religious  troubles,  and  also  (which 
suited  her  designs  better)  of  attracting  all  the  heads  of 


*^-  SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

ihe  Huguenot  cause  to  Paris.  Every  thing  turned  out 
as  she  hoped.  There  had  been  feasts  and  gayeties,  and 
suspicion  had  been  thoroughly  disarmed.  Suddenly  the 
tocsin  was  sounded,  and  the  murderers  let  loose  over  all 
the  town.  'No  plea  was  received  in  extenuation  of  the 
deadly  crime  of  favouring  the  new  opinions.  Hospi- 
tality, friendship,  relationship,  youth,  sex,  all  were  dis- 
regarded. The  streets  were  red  with  blood,  and  the 
river  choked  with  mutilated  bodies.  Upwards  of  seventy 
thousand  were  butchered  in  Paris  alone,  and  the  metro- 
politan example  was  followed  in  other  places.  The  deed 
was  so  awful  that  for  a  while  it  silenced  the  whole  of 
Europe.  Some  doubted,  some  shuddered;  but  Eome 
sprang  up  with  a  shout  of  joy  when  the  news  was  con- 
firmed, and  uttered  prayers  of  thanksgiving  for  so  great 
a  victory.  If  it  could  have  been  possible  to  put  every 
gainsayer  to  death  everywhere,  the  triumph  would  have 
been  complete ;  but  there  were  countries  where  Cathe- 
rine's dagger  could  not  reach;  and  whenever  her  name 
was  heard,  and  the  terrible  details  of  the  massacre  were 
known,  undying  hatred  of  the  Church  which  encouraged 
such  iniquity  mingled  with  the  feelings  of  pity  and 
alarm.  For  no  one  henceforth  could  feel  safe.  The 
Huguenots  were  under  the  highest  protection  known  to 
the  heart  of  man.  They  were  guests,  and  they  were 
taken  unawares  in  the  midst  of  the  rejoicings  of  a 
marriage.  Eome  lost  more  by  the  massacre  than  the 
Protestants.  People  looked  round  and  saw  the  butcher- 
ies in  the  Netherlands,  the  slaughters  in  Paris,  the 
tortures  in  the  Inquisition,  and  over  all,  rioting  in  hopes 
of  recovered  dominion,  supported  by  his  priests  and 
Dominicans,  a  Pope  who  plainly  threatened  a  repetition 
of  such  scenes  wherever  his  power  was  acknowledged. 
Germany,  the  Netherlands,  England,  Scotland,  and  the 
Northern  nations,  were   lost  to  the   Church  of  Rome 


MARY   EXECUTED.  44'd 

more  surely  by  the  scaffold  and  crimes  which  professed 
to  bring  her  aid,  than  by  any  other  cause.  Elizabeth 
was  now  the  accepted  champion  and  leader  of  the  Pro- 
testants, and  on  her  all  the  malice  of  the  baffled  Komanists 
was  turned.  To  weaken,  to  dethrone  or  murder  the 
EngHsh  heretic  was  the  praiseworthiest  of  deeds. 

But  one  great  means  of  distracting  England  from  her 
onward  course  was  now  removed.  In  former  days 
Scotland  would  have  been  let  loose  upon  her  unguarded 
flanks;  but  by  this  time  the  genius  of  Knox,  running 
parallel  with  the  efforts  of  the  Southern  reformers,  had 
raised  a  religious  feeling  which  responded  to  the  English 
call.  Scotland,  freed  from  an  oppressive  priesthood,  did 
manful  battle  at  the  side  of  her  former  enemy.  Eliza- 
beth was  kept  safe  by  the  joint  hatred  the  nations  enter- 
tained to  Rome,  and,  as  regarded  foreigners,  the  Union 
had  already  taken  place.  On  one  sure  ground,  however, 
those  foreigners  could  still  build  their  hopes.  Mary, 
conscientious  in  her  religion,  and  embittered  in  her  dis- 
like, was  still  alive,  to  be  the  rallying-point  for  every 
discontented  cry  and  to  i*epresent  the  old  causes, — the 
legitimate  descent  and  the  true  faith.  The  greatest 
circumspection  would  have  been  required  to  keep  her 
conduct  from  suspicion  in  these  embarrassing  circum- 
stances. But  she  was  still  as  thoughtless  as  in  her 
happier  days,  and  exposed  herself  to  legal  inquiries  by 
the  unguardedness  of  her  behaviour.  The  wise  coun- 
sellors of  Elizabeth  saw  but  one  way  to  put  an  end  to  all 
those  fears  and  expectations ;  and  Mary,  after  due  trial, 
-.ro^r  "w-as  condemned  and  executed.  Hope  was  now 
at  an  end ;  but  revenge  remained,  and  the  great 
Colossus  of  the  Papacy  bestirred  himself  to  punish  the 
sacrilegious  usurper.  Philip  the  Second  was  still  the 
most  Catholic  of  kings.  More  stem  and  bigoted  than 
when  he  had  tried  to  restrain  the  burning  zeal  of  Mary 


144 


SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 


of  England,  he  was  resolved  to  restore  by  force  a  re- 
volted people  to  the  Chair  of  St.  Peter  and  exact  venge- 
ance for  the  slights  and  scorns  which  had  rankled  in  his 
heart  from  the  date  of  his  ill-omened  visit.  He  pre- 
pared all  his  forces  for  the  glorious  attempt.  Nothing 
could  have  been  devised  more  calculated  to  bring  all 
English  hearts  more  closely  to  their  queen.  Every 
report  of  a  fresh  squadron  joining  the  fleets  already 
assembled  for  the  invasion  called  forth  more  zeal  in  be- 
half of  the  reformed  Church  and  the  undaunted  Eliza- 
beth. Scotland  also  held  some  vessels  ready  to  assist 
her  sister  in  this  great  extremity,  and  lined  her  shores 
with  Presbyterian  speannen.  Community  of  danger 
showed  more  clearly  than  ever  that  safety  lay  in  combi- 
nation. Chains,  we  know,  were  brought  over  in  those 
missionary  galleys,  and  all  the  apparatus  of  torture, 
with  smiths  to  set  them  to  work.  But  the  smiths  and 
the  chains  never  made  good  their  landing  on  British 
ground.  The  ships  covered  all  the  narrow  sea ;  but  the 
wind  blew,  and  they  were  scattered.  It  was  perhaps 
better,  as  a  warning  and  a  lesson,  that  the  principal 
cause  of  the  Spaniard's  disaster  was  a  storm.  If  it 
had  been  fairly  inflicted  on  them  in  open  battle,  the 
superior  seamanship  or  numbers  or  discipline  of  the 
enemy  might  have  been  pleaded.  But  there  must  have 
mingled  something  more  depressing  than  the  mere 
sorrow  of  defeat  when  Philip  received  his  discomfited 
admiral  with  the  words,  ""Wo  cannot  blame  you  for 
what  has  happened:  we  cannot  struggle  against  the 
will  of  God." 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 


iiings  of  ^France.    Utingsof  iSnglantiantiScotlanb 


i.2). 

Henry  IV. — {cont.) 
1610.  Louis  XIII. 
1643.  Louis  XIV. 

lEtnpecors  of  (Bermanp. 

EoDOLPH  II.  —{cont.) 
1612.  Matthias. 
1619.  Ferdinand  II. 
1637.  Ferdinand  III. 
1658.  Leopold  I. 


Elizabeth. — {cont.) 
{House  of  Stuart.) 
1603.  James  I. 
1625.  Charles  I. 
1649.  Commonwealth. 
1660.  Charles  II 
1685.  James  II. 
1689.  William  III.  and  Mary. 

icings  of  Spain* 

Philip  III. — {cont.) 
1621.  Philip  IV. 
1665.  Charles  II. 

113i!3tingui!3t)eti  Mtn. 

Bacon,  Milton,  Locke,  Corneille,  Racine,  Moliere,  Kepler, 
(1571-1630,)  Boyle,  (1627-1691,)  Bossuet,  (1627-1704,)  New- 
ton,  (1642-1727,)  Burnet,  (1643-1715,)  Bayle,  (1647-1706.) 
I'JoNDi,  TuRENNE,  (1611-1675,)  Marlborough,  (1650-1722.) 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY. 

ENGLISH   REBELLION   AND   REVOLUTION — PESPOTISM    OP 
LOUIS   THE   FOURTEENTH. 

We  are  apt  to  suppose  that  progress  and  innovation 
are  so  peculiarly  the  features  of  these  latter  times  that 
it  is  only  in  them  that  a  man  of  more  than  ordinary 
length  of  life  has  witnessed  any  remarkable  change. 
We  meet  with  inen  still  alive  who  were  acquainted  with 
Franklin  and  Yoltaire,  who  have  been  presented  at  the 
court  of  Louis  the  Sixteenth  and  have  visited  President 
Pierce  at  the  White  House.  But  the  period  we  have 
now  to  examine  is  quite  as  varied  in  the  contrasts  pre- 
sented by  the  duration  of  a  lifetime  as  in  any  other  age 
of  the  world.  Of  this  we  shall  take  a  French  chronicler 
as  an  example, — a  man  who  was  as  greedy  of  news,  and 
as  garrulous  in  relating  it,  as  Froissart  himself,  but  who 
must  take  a  very  inferior  rank  to  that  prose  minstrel 
of  "gentle  blood/'  as  he  limited  his  researches  princi- 
pally to  the  scandals  which  characterized  his  time. 
We  mean  the  truth-speaking  libeller  Brantome.  This 
man  died  within  a  year  or  two  of  Shakspeare, 
and  yet  had  accompanied  Mary  to  Scotland, 
and  given  that  poetical  account  of  the  voyage  from 
Calais,  when  she  sat  in  the  stern  of  the  vessel  with  her 
eyes  fixed  on  the  receding  shore,  and  said,  "Adieu, 
France,  adieu !  I  shall  never  see  you  more ;"  and  again, 
on  the  following  morning,  bending  her  looks  across  the 
water  when  land  was  no  longer  to  be  seen,  and  exclaim- 
'ng,  "  Adieu,  France !  I  shall  never  see  you  more."    Tho 

447 


^^  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

mere  comparison  of  these  two  things — the  return  of 
Mary  to  her  native  kingdom,  torn  at  that  time  with  all 
the  struggles  of  anarchy  and  distress,  and  the  death  of 
tho  greatest  of  earth's  poets,  rich  and  honoured,  in 
his  well-built  house  at  Stratford-on-Avon — suggests  a 
strange  contrast  between  the  beginning  of  Brantome's 
literary  career  and  its  close :  the  events  filling  up  the 
interval  are  like  the  scarcely-discernible  heavings  in  a 
dark  and  tumultuous  sea, — a  storm  perpetually  raging, 
and  waves  breaking  upon  every  shore.  In  his  own 
country,  cruelty  and  demoralization  had  infected  all 
orders  in  the  State,  till  murder,  and  the  wildest  pro- 
fligacy of  manners,  were  looked  on  without  a  shudder. 
Brantome  attended  the  scanty  and  unregretted  funeral 
of  Henry  the  Third,  the  last  of  the  house  of  Yalois, 
who  was  stabbed  by  the  monk  Jacques  Clement  for 
faltering  in  his  allegiance  to  the  Church.  A  sentence 
had  been  pronounced  at  Eome  against  the  miserable 
king,  and  the  fanatic's  dagger  was  ready.  Sixtus  the 
Fifth,  in  full  consistory,  declared  that  the  regicide  was 
"  comparable,  as  regards  the  salvation  of  the  world,  to 
the  incarnation  and  the  resurrection,  and  that  the 
courage  of  the  youthful  Jacobin  surpassed  that  of 
Eleazar  and  Judith."  "That  Pope,"  says  Chateau- 
briand, the  Catholic  historian  of  France,  "  had  too  little 
political  conviction,  and  too  much  genius,  to  be  sincere 
in  these  sacrilegious  comparisons ;  but  it  was  of  import- 
ance to  him  to  encourage  the  fanatics  who  were  ready 
to  murder  kings  in  the  name  of  the  papal  power." 
Brantome  had  seen  the  issuing  of  a  bull  containing  tho 
san'  e  penalties  against  Elizabeth,  the  death  of  Mary  on 
the  scaffold,  and  the  failure  of  the  Armada.  After  the 
horrors  of  the  religious  wars,  from  the  conspiracy  of 
Amboise  in  1560  to  the  publication  of  the  edict  of  tole- 
ration given  at  Kantes  in  1698,  he  had  seen  the  com- 


EAST   INDIA   COMPANY. 


449 


paratively  peaceful  days  of  Henry  the  Fourth,  till  fanati- 
cism again  awoke  a  suspicion  of  a  return  to  his  originaJ 
Protestant  leanings,  as  shown  in  his  opposition  to  the 
house  of  Austria,  and  Kavaillac  renewed  the  meritorious 
work  of  Clement  in  1610.  Last  of  all,  the  spectator  of 
all  these  changes  saw  England  and  Scotland  forevci 
united  under  one  crown,  and  the  first  rise  of  the  master 
of  the  modern  policy  of  Europe,  for  in  the  year  of 
Brantome's  death  a  young  priest  was  appointed  Secre- 
tary of  State  in  Prance,  whom  men  soon  gazed  on  with 
fear  and  wonder  as  the  great  Cardinal  Eichelieu. 

In  England  the  alterations  were  as  great  and  striking. 
After  the  troubled  years  from  Elizabeth's  accession  to 
the  Armada,  a  period  of  rest  and  progress  came.  In- 
terests became  spread  over  the  whole  nation,  and  did 
not  depend  so  exclusively  on  the  throne.  Wisdom  and 
good  feeling  made  Elizabeth's  crown,  in  fact,  what  laws 
and  compacts  have  made  her  successors', — a  constitu- 
tional sovereign's.  She  ascertained  the  sentiments  of 
her  people  almost  without  the  intervention  of  Parlia- 
ment, and  was  more  a  camer-through  of  the  national 
will  than  the  originator  of  absolute  decrees.  The 
moral  battles  of  a  nation  in  pursuit  of  some  momentous 
object  like  religious  or  political  freedom  bring  forth 
great  future  crops,  as  fields  are  enriched  on  which 
mighty  armies  have  been  engaged.  The  fertilizing 
influence  extends  in  every  direction,  far  and  near.  If, 
therefore,  the  intellectual  harvest  that  followed  the 
final  rejection  of  the  Pope  and  crowning  defeat  of  the 
Spaniard  included  Shakspeare  and  Bacon,  and  a  host  ot 
lesser  but  still  majestic  names,  we  may  venture  also  to 
remark,  on  the  duller  and  more  prosaic  side  of  the  ques- 
tion, that  in  the  first  year  of  the  seventeenth  century  a 
patent  was  issued  by  which  a  commercial  speculation 
attained   a  substantive   existence,  for  the  East  India 


160 


SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 


Company  was  founded,  with  a  stock  of  seventy-two 
thousand  pounds,  and  a  fleet  of  four  vessels  took  their 
way  from  the  English  harbours,  on  their  first  voyage  to 
the  realm  where  hereafter  their  employers,  who  thup 
began  as  merchant  adventurers,  were  to  rule  as  kings. 
The  example  set  by  these  enterprising  men  was  followed 
by  high  and  low.  During  the  previous  century  people 
had  been  too  busy  with  their  domestic  and  religious  dis- 
putes to  pay  much  attention  to  foreign  exploration. 
They  were  occupied  with  securing  their  liberties  from 
the  tyranny  of  Henry  the  Eighth  and  their  lives  from 
the  truculence  of  Mary.  Then  the  plots  perpetually 
formed  against  Elizabeth,  by  domestic  treason  and 
foreign  levy,  kept  their  attention  exclusively  on  home- 
affairs.  But  when  the  State  was  settled  and  religion 
secure,  the  long-pent-up  activity  of  the  national  mind 
found  vent  in  distant  expeditions.  A  chivalrous  con- 
tempt of  danger,  and  poetic  longing  for  new  adventure, 
mingled  with  the  baser  attractions  of  those  maritime 
wanderings.  The  families  of  gentle  blood  in  England, 
instead  of  sending  their  sons  to  waste  their  lives  in  pur- 
suit of  knightly  fame  in  the  service  of  foreign  states, 
equipped  them  for  far  higher  enterprises,  and  sent  them 
forth  to  gather  the  riches  of  unknown  lands  beyond  the 
sea.  Eomantic  rumours  were  rife  in  every  manor- 
house  of  the  strange  sights  and  inexhaustible  wealth  to 
be  gained  by  undaunted  seamanship  and  judicious  treat- 
ment of  the  natives  of  yet-unexplored  dominions.  Spain 
and  Portugal  had  their  kingdoms,  but  the  extent  of 
America  was  great  enough  for  all.  Islands  were  every- 
where to  be  found  untouched  as  yet  by  the  foot  of 
European;  and  many  a  winter's  night  was  spent  in 
talking  over  the  possible  results  of  sailing  up  some  of 
the  vast  rivers  that  came  down  like  bursting  oceans 
from  the  far-inland  regions  to  which  nobody  had  as  yet 


EXPEDITIONS. 


151 


ascended, — the  people  and  cities  that  lay  upon  their 
banks,  the  gold  and  jewels  that  paved  the  common  soil. 
Towards  the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  these  imaginings 
had  grown  into  sufficing  motives  of  action,  and  gentle- 
men were  ready  from  all  the  ports  of  the  kingdom  to 
sail  on  their  adventurous  voyages.  In  addition  to  tho 
chance  those  gallant  mariners  had  of  realizing  their 
day-dreams  by  tho  tedious  methods  of  discovery  and 
exploration,  there  was  always  the  prospect  of  making 
prize  of  a  galleon  of  Spain ;  for  at  all  times,  however 
friendly  the  nations  might  be  in  the  European  waters,  a 
war  waa  carried  on  beyond  the  Azores.  Not  altogether 
lost,  therefore,  was  the  old  knightly  spirit  of  peril-seek- 
ing and  adventure  in  those  commercial  and  geographical 
speculations.  There  were  articles  of  merchandise  in 
the  hold,  gaudy-coloured  cloths,  and  bead  ornaments, 
and  wretched  looking-glasses,  besides  brass  and  iron; 
but  all  round  the  captain's  cabin  were  arranged  swords 
and  pistols,  boarding-pikes,  and  other  implements  of 
fight.  Guns  also  of  larger  size  peeped  out  of  the  port- 
holes, and  the  crew  were  chosen  as  much  with  a  view 
to  warlike  operations  as  to  the  ordinary  duties  of  the 
ship.  The  Spaniards  had  made  their  way  into  the 
Pacific,  and  had  established  large  settlements  on  the 
shores  of  Chili  and  Peru.  Scenes  which  have  been 
reacted  at  tho  diggings  in  modern  times  took  place 
where  the  Europeans  fixed  their  seat,  and  ships  loaded 
with  the  precious  metals  found  their  way  home,  exposed 
to  all  the  perils  of  storm  and  war.  ^  Drake  had  pounced 
upon  several  of  their  galleys  and  despoiled  them  of  their 
precious  cargo.  Cavendish,  a  gentleman  of  good  estate 
in  Suffolk,  had  followed  in  his  wake,  and,  after  forcing 
his  way  through  the  Straits  of  Magellan,  had  reached 
the  shores  of  California  itself  and  there  captured  a 
Spanish  vessel  freighted  with  a  vast  amount  of  gol<' 


462  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

All  these  adventures  of  the  expiring  sixteenth  century 
became  traditions  and  ballads  of  the  young  seventeenth. 
Ealeigh,  the  most  accomplished  gentleman  of  his  time, 
gave  the  glory  of  his  example  to  the  maritime  career, 
and  all  the  oceans  were  alive  with  British  ships.  Whilo 
Raleigh  and  others  of  the  upper  class  were  carrying  on 
a  sort  of  cultivated  crusade  against  the  monopoly  of  tho 
Spaniards,  others  of  a  less  aristocratic  position  were 
busied  in  the  more  regular  paths  of  commerce.  "We 
have  seen  the  formation  of  the  India  Company  in  1600. 
Our  competitors,  the  Dutch,  fitted  out  fleets  on  a  larger 
scale,  and  established  relations  of  trade  and  friendship 
with  the  natives  of  Polynesia  and  New  Holland,  and 
even  of  Java  and  India.  But  the  zeal  of  the  public  in 
trading-speculations  was  not  only  shown  in  those  well- 
conducted  expeditions  to  lands  easily  accessible  and 
already  known :  a  company  was  established  for  the  pur- 
pose of  opening  out  the  African  trade,  and  a  com- 
mercial voyage  was  undertaken  to  no  less  a  place  than 
Timbuctoo  by  a  gallant  pair  of  seamen  of  the  names  of 
Thomson  and  Jobson.  It  was  not  long  before  these 
efforts  at  honest  international  communication,  and  even 
the  exploits  of  the  Drakes  and  Cavendishes,  who  acted 
under  commissions  from  the  queen,  degenerated  into 
lawless  piracy  and  the  golden  age  of  the  Buccaneers. 
The  policy  of  Spain  was  complete  monopoly  in  her  own 
hands,  and  a  refusal  of  foreign  intercourse  worthy  of 
the  potentates  of  China  and  Japan.  All  access  was  pro- 
hibited to  the  flags  of  foreign  nations,  and  the  natural  re- 
sult followed.  Adventurous  voyagers  made  their  appear- 
ance with  no  flag  at  all,  or  with  the  hideous  emblem  of  a 
death's  head  emblazoned  on  their  standard,  determined  to 
trade  peaceably  if  possible,  but  to  trade  whether  peaceably 
or  not.  The  Spanish  colonists  were  not  indisposed  to 
exchange  their  commodities  with  those  of   the  new 


EMIGRATION. 


458 


comers,  but  tlie  law  was  imperative.  The  Buccaneers, 
therefore,  proceeded  to  help  themselves  to  what  they 
wanted  by  force,  and  at  length  came  to  consider  them- 
selves an  organized  estate,  governed  by  their  own  laws, 
and  qualified  to  make  treaties  like  any  other  established 
and  recognised  power.  Cuba  had  been  nearly  depopu- 
lated by  the  cruelties  and  fanaticism  of  its  Spanish 
masters,  and  was  seized  on  by  the  Buccaneers.  From 
this  rich  and  beautiful  island  the  pirate-barks  dashed 
out  upon  any  Spanish  sail  which  might  be  leaving  the 
mainland.  Commanding  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  with 
the  power  of  crossing  the  Isthmus  of  Panama  by  a 
rapid  march,  those  redoubtable  bandits  held  the  treasure- 
lands  of  the  Spaniards  in  terrible  subjection.  And  up 
to  the  commencement  even  of  the  eighteenth  century 
the  frightful  spectacle  was  presented  of  a  powerful  con- 
federacy of  the  wildest  and  most  dissolute  villains  in 
Europe  domineering  over  the  most  frequented  seas  in 
the  world,  and  filling  peaceful  voyagers,  and  even  well- 
armed  men-of-war,  with  alarm  by  their  unsparing 
cruelty,  and  atrocities  which  it  curdles  the  blood  to 
think  of. 

Eastward  as  far  as  China,  westward  to  the  islands 
and  shores  of  the  great  Pacific,  up  the  rivers  of  Africa, 
and  even  among  the  forests  of  New  Holland  and  Tas- 
mania, the  swarms  of  European  adventurers  succeeded 
each  other  without  cessation.  The  marvel  is,  that,  with 
such  ceaseless  activity,  any  islands,  however  remote  or 
small,  were  left  for  the  discovery  of  after-times.  But 
the  tide  of  English  emigration  rolled  towards  the  main- 
land of  North  America  with  a  steadier  flow  than  to  any 
other  quarter.  The  idea  of  a  northwest  passage  to 
India  had  taken  possession  of  men's  minds,  and  hardy 
■eamen  had  alread}'-  braved  the  horrors  of  a  polar 
winter,  and  set  examples  of   fortitude    and   patience 


*64  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

which  their  successors,  from  Behrens  to  Kane,  have 
so  nobly  followed.  But  the  fertile  plains  of  Virginia^ 
and  the  navigable  streams  of  the  eastern  shore,  were 
more  alluring  to  the  peaceful  and  unenterprising  settlers, 
whose  object  was  to  find  a  new  home  and  carry  on  a 
lucrative  trade  with  the  native  Indians.  In  1607,  a 
colony,  properly  so  called, — for  it  had  made  provision 
for  permanent  settlement,  and  consisted  of  a  hundred 
and  ten  persons,  male  and  female, — arrived  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Chesapeake.  The  river  Powhatan  was  eagerly 
explored;  and  at  a  point  sufficiently  far  up  to  be  secure 
from  sudden  attack  from  the  sea,  and  on  an  isthmus 
easily  defended  from  native  assault,  they  pitched  their 
tents  on  a  spot  which  was  hereafter  known  as  James- 
town and  is  still  honoured  as  the  earliest  of  the 
American  settlements.  Our  neighbour  Holland  was 
not  behindhand  either  in  trade  or  colonization,  and 
equally  with  England  was  excited  to  fresh  efforts  by  its 
recovered  liberty  and  independence.  In  all  directions 
of  intellectual  and  physical  employment  those  two 
States  went  boundingly  forward  at  the  head  of  the  move- 
ment. The  absolute  monarchies  lay  lazily  by,  and 
relied  on  the  inertness  of  their  mass  for  their  defence 
against  those  active  competitors;  and  Spain,  an  un- 
wieldy bulk,  showed  the  intimate  connection  there  will 
al^vays  exist  between  liberal  institutions  at  home  and 
active  progress  abroad.  The  sun  never  set  on  the 
dominions  of  the  Spanish  crown,  but  the  life  of  the 
people  was  crushed  out  of  them  by  the  weight  of  the  In- 
quisition and  despotism.  The  United  Provinces  and  com- 
bined Great  Britain  had  shaken  off  both  those  petrify- 
ing institutions,  and  Englishmen,  Scotchmen,  and  Dutch- 
men were  ploughing  up  every  sea,  presenting  them- 
Belves  at  the  courts  of  strange-coloured  potentates,  in 
regions  whose  existence  had  been  unknown  a  few  yeari 


MERRY   ENGLAND.  455 

before,  and  gradually  accustoming  the  wealth  and  com. 
merce  of  the  world  to  find  their  way  to  London  and 
Amsterdam. 

To  go  from  these  views  of  hardihood  and  enterprise, 
from  the  wild  heaving  of  unruly  vigour  which  animated 
the  traffickers  and  tyrants  of  the  main,  to  the  peacefuJ 
and  pedantic  domestic  reign  of  James  the  First,  shows 
the  two  extremes  of  European  character  at  this  time. 
The  English  people  were  not  more  than  four  millions  in 
number,  but  they  were  the  happiest  and  most  favoured 
of  all  the  nations.     This  was  indeed  the  time, 

"  Ere  England's  woes  began, 
When  every  rood  of  land  maintain'd  its  man ;" 

for  wo  have  seen  how  the  division  of  the  great  monastic 
properties  had  created  a  new  order  in  the  State.  All 
accounts  concur  in  describing  the  opening  of  this  cen- 
tury as  the  period  of  the  greatest  physical  prosperity 
of  the  body  of  the  people.  A  great  deal  of  dulness 
and  unrefinement  there  must  still  have  been  in  the 
boroughs,  where  such  sage  officials  as  Dogberry  dis- 
played their  pomp  and  ignorance, — a  great  deal  of 
clownishness  and  coarseness  in  country-places,  where 
Audreys  and  Autolycuses  were  to  be  found ;  but  among 
townsmen  and  peasantry  there  was  none  of  the  grind- 
ing poverty  which  a  more  unequal  distribution  of 
national  wealth  creates.  There  were  great  Whitsun 
ales,  and  dancings  round  the  Maypole ;  feasts  on  village 
greens,  and  a  spirit  of  rude  and  personal  independence, 
which  became  mellowed  into  manly  self-respect  when 
treated  with  deference  by  the  higher  ranks,  the  old 
hereditary  gentry  and  the  retired  statesmen  of  Queen 
Bess,  but  bristled  up  in  insolence  and  rebellion  when 
the  governing  power  thwarted  its  wishes,  or  fanaticism 
Bonred  it  with  the  bitter  waters  of  polemic  strife.  The 
sturdy  Englishman  who  doffed  his  hat  to  the  squire,  and 


*&6  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

joined  his  young  lord  in  sports  upon  the  green,  in  the 
beginning  of  James's  reign,  was  the  same  stout-hearted, 
strong-willed  individual  who  stiffened  into  Puritanism 
and  contempt  of  all  earthly  authorities  in  the  unlovely, 
unloving  days  of  the  Eump-and  Cromwell.  Nor  should 
we  miss  the  great  truth  which  lies  hidden  under  the  rigid 
forms  of  that  period, — that  the  same  noble  qualities  which 
characterized  the  happy  yeoman  and  jocund  squire  of 
1620 — their  earnestness,  energy,  and  intensity  of  home 
affections — were  no  less  existent  in  their  ascetic  short- 
haired  descendants  of  1650.  The  brimfulness  of  life 
which  overflowed  into  expeditions  against  the  Spaniards 
in  Peru,  and  unravellings  of  the  tangled  rivers  of  Africa, 
and  trackings  of  the  wild  bears  among  the  ice-floes  of 
Hudson's  Bay,  took  a  new  direction  when  the  century 
reached  the  middle  of  its  course,  and  developed  itself  in 
the  stormy  discussions  of  the  contending  sects  and  the 
blood  and  misery  of  so  many  battle-fields.  How  was  this 
great  change  worked  on  the  English  mind?  How  was  it 
that  the  long-surviving  soldier,  courtier,  landholder,  of 
Queen  Elizabeth  saw  his  grandson  grow  up  into  the  hard- 
featured,  heavy-browed,  keen-sworded  Ironside  of  Oliver  'i 
A  squire  who  ruined  himself  in  loyal  entertainments  to 
King  James  on  his  larder-and-cellar-emp tying  journey 
from  Edinburgh  to  London  in  1603  may  have  lived  to 
see  his  son,  and  son's  son,  rejoicing  with  unholy  triumph 
over  the  victory  of  Naseby  in  1644  and  the  death  of 
Charles  in  1649. 

Great  causes  must  have  been  at  work  to  produce  this 
astonishing  change,  and  some  of  them  it  will  not  be 
difficult  to  point  out.  Perhaps,  indeed,  the  prosperity 
we  have  described  may  itself  have  contributed  to  the 
alteration  in  the  English  ways  of  thought.  While  the 
nation  was  trampled  on  by  Henry  the  Eighth,  with 
property  and  life  insecure  and  poverty  universally  dif- 


CHURCH   OF   ENGLAND. 


467 


fused,  or  even  while  it  was  guided  by  the  strong  hand 
of  Elizabeth,  it  had  neither  power  nor  inclination  to 
examine  into  its  rights.  The  rights  of  a  starving  and 
oppressed  population  are  not  very  great,  even  in  its  own 
eyes.  It  is  the  well-fed,  law-protected,  enterprising 
citizen  who  sees  the  value  of  just  and  settled  govern- 
ment, because  the  blessings  he  enjoys  depend  upon  its 
continuance.  The  mind  of  the  nation  had  been  pauper- 
ized along  with  its  body  by  the  life  of  charitable  de- 
pendence it  had  led  at  the  doors  of  church  and  monas- 
teiy  in  the  olden  time.  It  little  mattered  to  a  gaping 
crowd  expecting  the  accustomed  dole  whether  the  great 
man  in  London  was  a  tyrannical  king  or  not.  They  did 
not  care  w^hether  he  dismissed  his  Parliaments  or  cut 
off  the  heads  of  his  nobility.  They  still  found  their 
"bit  and  sup,"  and  saw  the  King,  and  Parliament,  and 
nobility,  united  in  obedience  to  the  Church.  But  when 
this  debasing  charity  was  discontinued,  independence 
came  on.  The  idle  hanger-on  of  the  religious  house 
became  a  cottager,  and  worked  on  his  own  land;  by 
industry  he  got  capital  enough  to  take  some  additional 
acres ;  and  the  man  of  the  next  generation  had  forgotten 
the  low  condition  he  sprang  from,  and  had  so  sharp- 
ened his  mind  by  the  theological  quarrels  of  the  time 
that  he  began  to  be  able  to  comprehend  the  question  of 
general  politics.  He  saw,  as  every  population  and  po- 
tentate in  Europe  saw  with  equal  clearness,  that  the 
question  of  civil  freedom  was  indissolubly  connected 
with  the  relation  between  Church  and  State;  he  per- 
ceived that  the  extent  of  divergence  from  the  old  faith 
regulated  in  a  great  measure  the  spirit,  and  even  the 
constitution,  of  government  where  it  took  place, — that 
adhesion  to  Eome  meant  absolutism  and  dependence, 
that  Calvinism  had  a  strong  bias  towards  the  republican 
form,  and  that  the  Church  he  had  helped  to  establish 
20 


*58  SEVENTEENTH  CENTUK"5. 

was  calculated  to  fill  up  the  ground  between  those  two 
extremes,  and  be  the  religious  representative  of  a  State 
as  liberal  as  Geneva  by  its  attention  to  the  interests  of 
all,  and  as  monarchical  as  Spain  by  its  loyalty  to  an 
hereditary  crown.  Now,  the  middle  ground  in  great 
and  agitating  affairs  is  always  the  most  difficult  to 
maintain.  Both  sides  make  it  their  battle-field,  and  try 
to  win  it  to  themselves ;  and  according  as  one  assailant 
seems  on  the  point  of  carrying  his  object,  the  defender 
of  that  disputed  territory  has  to  lean  towards  the  other. 
Both  parties  are  offended  at  the  apparent  inconsistency; 
and  we  are  therefore  not  to  be  surprised  if  we  find  the 
Church  accused  of  looking  to  both  the  hostile  camps  in 
turn. 

James  was  a  fatal  personage  to  every  cause  he  under- 
took to  defend.  He  had  neither  the  strength  of  will  of 
Henry,  nor  the  proud  consistency  of  Elizabeth ;  but  he 
had  the  arrogance  and  presumption  of  both.  Questions 
which  the  wise  queen  was  afraid  to  touch,  and  left  to  the 
ripening  influence  of  time,  this  blustering  arguer  dragged 
into  premature  discussion,  stripped  them  of  all  their 
dignity  by  the  frivolousness  of  the  treatment  he  gave 
them,  and  disgusted  all  parties  by  the  harshness  and 
rapidity  of  his  partial  decisions.  Every  step  he  took  in 
the  quelling  of  religious  dissension  by  declarations  in 
favour  of  proscription  and  authority  which  would  have 
endeared  him  to  Gregory  the  Seventh,  he  accompanied 
with  some  frightful  display  of  his  absolutist  tendencies 
in  civil  affairs.  The  same  man  who  roared  down  the 
m5dest  claims  of  a  thousand  of  the  clergy  who  wished 
some  further  modification  of  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer  threw  recusant  members  of  Parliament  into 
prison,  persecuted  personal  enemies  to  death,  with 
scarcely  a  form  of  law,  punished  refractory  towns  with 
loss  of  franchises  and  privileges,  and  made  open  declara- 


JAMES   I.  469 

tion  of  his  unlimited  power  over  the  lives  and  properties 
of  all  his  subjects.  People  saw  this  unvarying  alliance 
between  his  polemics  and  his  politics,  and  began  to  con- 
sider seriously  whether  the  comforts  their  trade  and  in- 
dustry had  given  them  could  be  safe  under  a  Church 
calling  itself  reformed,  but  protected  by  such  a  king. 
If  he  was  only  suspected  in  England,  in  his  own  country 
he  was  fully  known.  Dearer  to  James  would  have  been 
a  hundred  bishops  and  cardinals  seated  in  conclave  in 
Holyrood  than  a  Presbyterian  Synod  praying  against 
his  policy  in  the  High  Kirk.  He  had  even  written  to 
the  Pope  with  offers  of  accommodation  and  reconcile- 
ment, and  made  no  secret  of  his  individual  and  official 
disgust  at  the  levelling  ideas  of  those  grave  followers  of 
Knox  and  Calvin.  Those  grave  followers  of  Knox  and 
Calvin,  however,  were  not  unknown  on  the  south  side 
of  the  Tweed.  The  intercourse  between  the  countries 
was  not  limited  to  the  hungry  gentry  who  followed 
James  on  his  accession.  A  community  of  interest  and 
feeling  united  the  more  serious  of  the  Eeformers,  and 
visits  and  correspondence  were  common  between  them. 
But,  while  a  regard  for  their  personal  freedom  and  the 
security  of  their  wealth  attracted  the  attention  of  the 
English  middle  class  to  the  proceedings  of  King  James, 
events  were  going  on  in  foreign  lands  which  had  an 
immense  effect  on  the  development  of  the  anti-mon- 
archic, anti-episcopal  spirit  at  home.  These  events 
have  not  been  sufficiently  considered  in  this  relation, 
and  we  have  been  too  much  in  the  habit  of  looking  at 
our  English  doings  in  those  momentous  years, — from  the 
end  of  James's  reign  to  the  Eestoration, — as  if  Britain 
had  continued  as  isolated  from  her  Continental  neigh- 
bours as  before  the  Norman  Conquest.  But  a  careful 
comparison  of  dates  and  actions  will  show  how  intimate 
the  connection  had  become  beiween  the  European  States, 


160 


SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 


and  how  instantaneously  the  striking  of  a  chord  at 
Prague  or  Yienna  thrilled  through  the  general  heart  in 
Edinburgh  and  London. 

The  Beformation,  after  achieving  its  independence 
and  equality  at  the  Treaty  of  Augsburg  in  1555,  had 
made  great  though  silent  progress.  Broken  off  in  Ger- 
many into  two  parties,  the  Lutheran  and  the  Calvinist, 
who  hated  each  other,  as  usual,  in  exact  proportion  to 
the  smallness  of  their  difference,  the  union  was  still 
kept  up  between  them  as  regarded  their  antagonism  to 
the  Papists.  "With  all  three  denominations,  the  religious 
part  of  the  question  had  fallen  into  terrible  abeyance. 
It  was  now  looked  on  by  the  leaders  entirely  as  a  matter 
of  personal  advancement  and  political  rule.  In  this 
pursuit  the  fanaticism  which  is  generally  limited  to 
theology  took  the  direction  of  men's  political  conduct; 
and  there  were  enthusiasts  among  all  the  sects,  who  saw 
visions,  and  dreamed  dreams,  about  the  succession  to 
thrones  and  the  raising  of  armies,  as  used  to  happen  in 
more  ancient  times  about  the  bones  of  martyrs  and  the 
beatification  of  saints.  The  great  object  of  Protestants 
and  Catholics  was  to  obtain  a  majority  in  the  college  of 
the  Prince  Electors  by  whom  the  Empire  was  bestowed. 
This  consisted  of  the  seven  chief  potentates  of  Ger- 
many, of  whom  four  were  secular, — the  King  of  Bo- 
hemia, the  Count  Palatine  of  the  Ehine,  the  Duke  of 
Saxony,  and  the  Marquis  of  Brandenburg;  and  three 
ecclesiastic, — ^the  Archbishops  of  Mentz,  Treves,  and 
Cologne.  The  majority  was  naturally  secured  to  the 
Romanists  by  the  oflScial  adhesion  of  these  last.  But 
it  chanced  that  the  Elector  of  Cologne  fell  violently  in 
love  with  Agnes  of  Mansfeldt,  a  canoness  of  Gerrestein ; 
and  having  of  course  studied  the  history  of  our  Henry 
the  Eighth  and  Anne  Boleyn,  he  determined  to  follow  his 
example,  and  offered  the  fair  canoness  his  hand.     Ho 


DIVISION   AMONQ   THE    PROTESTANTS.  461 

was  unwilling,  however,  to  offer. bis  hand  without  the 
Electoral  crozier,  and,  by  the  advice  of  his  friends,  and 
with  the  promised  support  of  many  of  the  Protestant 
rulers,  he  retained  bis  ecclesiastical  dignity  and  made 
the  beautiful  Agnes  his  wife.  This  would  not  have  been 
of  much  consequence  in  a  lower  rank,  for  many  of  the 
cathedral  dignitaries  in  Cologne  and  other  places  had 
retained  their  offices  after  changing  their  faith;  but  all 
Germany  was  awake  to  the  momentous  nature  of  this 
transaction,  for  it  would  have  conveyed  a  majority  of 
the  Electoral  voices  to  the  Protestants  and  opened  the 
throne  of  the  empire  itself  to  a  Protestant  prince.  Such, 
however,  was  the  strength  at  that  time  of  the  opposition 
to  Eome,  that  all  the  efforts  of  the  Catholics  would  have 
been  ineffectual  to  prevent  this  ruinous  arrangement 
but  for  a  circumstance  which  threw  division  into  the 
Protestant  camp.  Gebhard  had  adhered  to  the  Calvin- 
istic  branch  of  the  Eeformation,  and  the  Lutherans 
hated  him  with  a  deadlier  hatred  than  the  Pope  himself. 
With  delight  they  saw  him  outlawed  by  the  Emperor 
and  excommunicated  by  Eome,  his  place  supplied  by  a 
Prince  of  Bavaria,  who  was  elected  by  the  Chapter  of 
Cologne  to  protect  them  from  their  apostate  archbishop, 
and  the  head  of  the  house  of  Austria  strengthened  by 
the  consolidation  of  his  Electoral  allies  and  the  unap- 
peasable dissensions  of  his  enemies.  While  petty  in- 
terests and  the  narrowest  quarrels  of  sectarianism 
divided  the  Protestants,  and  while  the  Electors  and 
other  princes  who  had  adopted  their  theological  opinions 
were  doubtful  of  the  political  results  of  religious  free- 
dom, and  many  had  waxed  cold,  and  others  were  discon- 
tented with  the  small  extent  of  the  liberation  from 
ancient  trammels  they  had  yet  obtained,  a  very  different 
spectacle  was  presented  on  the  other  side.  Popes  and 
Jesuits  were  heartily  and  unhesitatingly  at  work.     "No 


162 


SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 


cold,  faint-hearted  doubtings  teased  them."  Their  ob 
ject  was  incommoded  by  no  refinements  or  verbal  differ- 
ences ;  they  were  determined  to  assert  their  old  supre- 
macy,— to  trample  out  every  vestige  of  resistance  to 
their  power;  and  they  entered  upon  the  task  without 
scruple  or  remorse.  Ferdinand  the  Emperor,  the  prop 
and  champion  of  the  Romish  cause,  was  as  sincere  and 
as  unpitying  as  Dominic.  When  he  had  been  nomi- 
nated King  Elect  of  Bohemia,  in  1598,  while  yet  in  his 
twentieth  year,  his  first  thought  was  the  future  use  ho 
might  make  of  his  authority  in  the  extermination  of  the 
Protestant  faith.  The  Jesuits,  by  whom  he  was  trained 
from  his  earliest  years,  never  turned  out  a  more  hopeful 
pupil.  His  ambition  would  have  been,  if  he  had  had  it 
in  his  power,  to  become  a  follower  of  Loyola  himself; 
but,  as  he  was  condemned  by  fate  to  the  lower  ofiice  of 
the  first  of  secular  princes,  he  determined  to  employ  all 
its  power  at  the  dictation  of  his  teachers.  He  went  a 
pilgrimage  to  Loretto,  and,  bowing  before  the  miraculous 
image  of  the  Yirgin,  promised  to  reinstate  the  true 
Church  in  its  unquestioned  supremacy,  and  bent  all  his 
thoughts  to  the  fulfilment  of  his  vow.  Two-thirds  of 
his  subjects  in  his  hereditary  states  were  Protestant,  but 
he  risked  all  to  attain  his  object.  He  displaced  their 
clergy,  and  banished  all  who  would  not  conform.  He 
introduced  Catholics  from  foreign  countries  to  supply 
the  waste  of  population,  and  sent  armed  men  to  destroy 
the  newly-erected  schools  and  churches  of  the  hateful 
heretics.  This  man  was  crowned  King  of  Bohemia  in 
1618,  and  Emperor  of  Germany  in  the  following  year. 

The  attention  of  the  British  public  had  been  particu- 
larly directed  to  German  interests  for  the  six  years  pre- 
ceding this  date,  by  the  marriage  of  Frederick,  Electci 
Palatine  of  the  Ehine,  with  Elizabeth,  the  graceful  and 
accomplished  daughter  of  King  James.    Frederick  was 


BEHAVIOUR   OF   JAMES   I. 


46d 


young  and  ambitious,  and  was  endeared  to  the  English 
people  as  leader  of  the  Protestant  cause  against  the 
overweening  pretensions  of  the  house  of  Austria.  That 
house  was  still  the  most  powerful  in  Europe ;  for  though 
the  Spanish  monarchy  was  held  by  another  branch,  for 
aU  the  purposes  of  despotism  and  religion  its  weight 
was  thrown  into  the  same  scale.  Spanish  soldiers,  and 
all  the  treasures  of  America,  were  still  at  the  command 
of  the  Empire;  and  perhaps  Catholicism  was  rather 
strengthened  than  weakened  by  the  adherence  of  two 
Df  the  greatest  sovereigns  in  the  world,  instead  of 
having  the  personal  influence  of  only  one,  as  in  the 
reiecn  of  Charles  the  Fifth.  All  the  Elector's  movements 
were  followed  with  affectionate  interest  by  the  subjects 
of  his  father-in-law ;  but  James  himself  disapproved  of 
opposition  being  offered  to  the  wildest  excesses  of  royal 
prerogative  either  in  himself  or  any  other  anointed 
ruler.  Besides  this,  he  was  particularly  hostile  to  the 
young  champion's  religious  principles,  for  the  latter  was 
attached  to  the  Calvinistic  or  unepiscopal  party.  James 
declined  to  give  him  any  aid  in  maintaining  his  right  to 
the  crown  of  Bohemia,  to  which  he  was  elected  by  the 
Protestant  majority  of  that  kingdom  on  the  accession 
of  Ferdinand  to  the  Empire,  and  managed  to 
show  his  feelings  in  the  most  offensive  manner, 
by  oppressing  such  of  Frederick's  co-religionistb  as  he 
found  in  any  part  of  his  dominions.  The  advocates  of 
peace  at  any  price  have  praised  the  behaviour  of  the 
king  in  this  emergency;  but  it  maybe  doubted  whether 
an  energetic  display  of  English  power  at  this  time 
might  not  have  prevented  the  great  and  cruel  reaction 
aguinst  freedom  and  Protestantism  which  the  \ictory 
of  the  bigoted  Ferdinand  over  his  neglected  competitor 
mt/oduced.  A  riot,  accompanied  with  violence  against 
the   Catholic   authorities,   was    the    beginning   of   the 


*64  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

troubles  in  Bohemia ;  and  Ferdinand,  as  if  to  explaii 
his  conduct  to  the  satisfaction  of  James,  published  a 
manifesto,  which  might  almost  be  believed  to  have  been 
the  production  of  that  Solomon  of  the  North.  "If 
Bovereign  power,"  he  says,  "  emanates  from  God,  these 
atrocious  deeds  must  proceed  from  the  devil,  and  there- 
fore must  draw  down  divine  punishment."  This  logic 
was  unanswerable  at  Whitehall,  and  the  work  of  exter- 
mination went  on.  Feeble  eiforts  were  forced  upon  the 
unwilling  father-in-law ;  for  all  the  chivalry  of  England 
was  wild  with  sympathy  and  admiration  of  the  Bohe- 
mian queen.  Hundreds  of  gallant  gentlemen  passed 
over  to  swell  the  Protestant  ranks ;  and  when  they  re- 
turned and  told  the  tale  of  all  the  horrors  they  had 
seen,  the  remorseless  vengeance  of  the  triumphant 
Church,  and  all  the  threatenings  with  which  Eome  and 
the  Empire  endeavoured  to  terrify  the  nations  which 
had  rebelled  against  their  yoke,  Puritanism,  or  resist- 
ance to  the  slightest  approach  towards  Popery  either  in 
essentials  or  externals,  became  patriotism  and  self- 
defence  ;  and  at  this  very  time,  while  men's  minds  were 
inflamed  with  the  descriptions  of  the  torturings  and 
executions  which  followed  the  battle  of  Prague  in  1620, 
and  the  devastation  and  depopulation  of  Bohemia, 
James  took  the  opportunity  of  forcing  the  Episcopal 
form  of  government  on  the  Scottish  Presbyterians. 

"  The  greatest  matter,"  he  says,  in  an  address  to  the 
prelates  of  the  reluctant  dioceses, — "the  greatest  matter 
the  Puritans  had  to  object  against  the  Church  govern 
ment  was,  that  your  proceedings  were  warranted  by  no 
law,  which  now  by  this  last  Parliament  is  cutted  short. 
The  sword  is  now  put  in  your  hands.  Go  on,  therefore, 
to  use  it,  and  let  it  rest  no  longer  till  ye  have  perfected 
the  service  trusted  to  you ;  or  otherwise  we  must  use  it 
both  against  you  and  them."     While  the  people  of  both 


CONDUCT    OF   CHARLES   I. 


465 


nations  were  willing  to  sink  their  polemic  diflerences  of 
Calvinist  and  Anglican  in  one  great  attempt  to  deliver 
the  Protestants  in  Germany  from  the  power  of  the  house 
of  Austria, — while  for  this  purpose  they  would  have 
voted  taxes  and  raised  armies  with  the  heartiest  good 
will, — ^the  king's  whole  attention  was  bestowed  on  a  set 
of  manoeuvres  for  the  obtaining  a  Spanish-Austrian 
bride  for  his  son.  To  gain  this  he  would  have  humbled 
himself  to  the  lowest  acts.  At  a  whisper  from  Madrid, 
he  interfered  with  the  German  war,  to  the  detriment  of 
his  own  daughter;  and  England  perceived  that  his 
ineradicable  love  of  power  and  hatred  of  freedom  had 
blinded  him  to  national  interests  and  natural  affections. 
If  we  follow  the  whole  career  of  James,  and  a  great 
portion  of  his  successor's,  we  shall  see  the  same  remark- 
able coincidence  between  the  events  in  England  and 
abroad, — unpopularity  of  the  king,  produced  by  his 
apparent  lukewarmness  in  the  general  Protestant  causo 
as  much  as  by  his  arbitrary  acts  at  home.  Whatever 
the  nation  desired,  the  king  opposed.  When  Gustavus 
Adolphus,  the  Lion  of  the  North,  began  his  triumphant 
career  in  1630,  and  re-established  the  fallen  fortunes  of 
Protestantism,  Charles  concluded  a  dishonourable  peace 
with  Spain,  without  a  single  provision  in  favour  of  the 
Protestants  of  the  German  States,  and  allowed  the 
Popish  Cardinal  Eichelieu  first  to  consolidate  his  forces 
by  an  unsparing  oppression  of  the  Huguenots  in  Franco, 
and  then  to  almost  compensate  for  his  harshness  by  a 
gallant  support  of  the  Swedish  hero  in  his  struggle 
Bgainst  the  Austrian  power. 

There  was  no  longer  the  same  content  and  happiness 
In  the  towns  and  country  districts  as  there  had  been  at 
the  commencement  of  the  century.  Men  had  looked 
with  contempt  and  dislike  on  the  proceedings  of  James's 
court, — his  coarse  buffoonery,  and  disgraceful  patronage 


^^^  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

of  a  succession  of  worthless  favourites;  and  they  con- 
tinned  to  look,  not  indeed  with  contempt,  but  with 
increased  dislike  and  suspicion,  on  the  far  purer  court 
and  dignified  manners  of  his  unfortunate  son.  A 
French  princess,  though  the  daughter  of  Henry  the 
Fourth,  was  regarded  as  an  evil  omen  for  the  continu- 
ance of  good  government  or  religious  progress.  Her 
attendants,  lay  and  clerical,  were  not  unjustly  con- 
sidered spies,  and  advisers  with  interests  hostile  to  the 
pojDular  tendencies.  And  all  this  time  went  on  the 
unlucky  coincidences  which  distinguished  this  reign, — 
of  Catholic  cruelties  in  foreign  lands,  and  approaches  to 
the  Catholic  ceremonial  in  the  reformed  Church.  While 
Tilly,  the  remorseless  general  of  the  Emperor,  was 
letting  loose  the  most  ferocious  army  which  ever  served 
under  a  national  standard  upon  the  inhabitants  of 
Magdeburg,  heaping  into  the  history  of  that  miserable 
assault  all  the  suiferings  that  "  horror  e'er  conceived  or 
fancy  feigned," — and  while  the  echo  of  that  awful 
butchery,  which  has  not  yet  died  out  of  the  German 
heart,  was  making  sorrowful  every  fireside  in  what  was 
once  merry  England, — the  king's  advisers  pursued  their 
blind  way,  torturing  their  opponents  with  knife  and 
burning-brand  upon  the  pillory,  -flogging  gentlemen 
nearly  to  death  upon  the  streets,  and  consecrating 
churches  with  an  array  of  surplice,  and  censer,  and 
processions,  and  organ-blowings,  which  would  have  done 
honour  to  St.  Peter's  at  Eome.  People  saw  a  lamentable 
connection  between  the  excesses  of  Catholic  cruelty  and 
the  tendency  in  our  sober  establishment  to  Catholic 
traditions,  and  became  fanatical  in  their  detestation  of 
the  simplest  forms. 

In  ordinary  times  the  wise  man  considers  mere  forms 
as  almost  below  his  notice ;  but  there  are  periods  when 
♦^hc  emblem  is  of  as  much  importance  as  the  thing  it 


POLITICAL   AND   RELIGIOUS   PARTIES.  467 

typifies.  Church  ceremonies,  and  gorgeous  robes,  and 
magnificent  worship,  were  accepted  by  both  parties  as 
tho  touchstone  of  their  political  and  religious  opinions. 
Laud  pushed  aside  the  Archbishop  of  Glasgow,  who 
stood  at  Charles's  right  hand  on  his  visit  to  Scotland  in 
1633,  on  the  express  ground  that  he  had  not  the  ortho- 
dox fringe  upon  his  habit, — a  ridiculous  ground  for  so 
open  an  insult,  if  it  had  not  had  an  inner  sense.  The 
Archbishop  of  Glasgow  professed  himself  a  moderate 
Churchman  by  the  plainness  of  his  dress,  and  Laud 
accepted  it  as  a  defiance.  Meanwhile  the  essential  in- 
significance of  the  symbol  threw  an  air  of  ridicule  over 
the  importance  attached  to  it.  Dull-minded  men,  who 
had  not  the  faculty  of  seeing  how  deep  a  question  may 
lie  in  a  simple  exposition  of  it,  or  frivolous  men,  who 
could  not  rise  to  the  real  earnestness  which  enveloped 
those  discussions,  were  scandalized  at  tho  persistency  of 
Laud  in  enforcing  his  fancies,  and  the  obstinacy  of  a 
great  portion  of  the  clergy  and  people  in  resisting  them. 
But  the  Puritans,  with  clearer  eyes,  saw  that  a  dance, 
according  to  proclamation,  on  the  village  green  on  Sun- 
day, meant  not  a  mere  desecration  of  the  Sabbath,  but 
a  crusade  against  the  rights  of  conscience  and  an  asser- 
tion of  arbitrary  power.  Altars  instead  of  communion- 
tables in  churches  meant  not  merely  a  restoration  of  the 
Popish  belief  in  the  real  sacrifice  of  the  mass,  but  a 
placing  of  the  king  above  the  law,  and  the  abrogation 
of  all  liberty.  They  could  not  at  this  time  persuade  the 
nation  of  these  things.  The  nation,  for  the  most  part, 
•aw  nothing  more  than  met  their  bodily  eyes ;  and,  in 
despair  of  escaping  the  slavery  which  they  saw  the 
success  of  Ferdinand  in  Germany  was  likely  to  spread 
over  Europe,  they  began  the  long  train  of  voyages  to 
the  Western  World,  which  times  of  suffering  and  uncer- 
tainty have  continued  at  intervals  to  the  present  day 


168 


SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 


It  is  said  that  a  vessel  was  stopped  by  royal  warrant 
when  it  was  on  the  point  of  sailing  from  the  Thames 
with  emigrants  to  America  in  1637.  On  board  were 
various  persons  whose  names  would  probably  never 
have  been  heard  of  if  they  had  been  allowed  in  peace 
and  safety  to  pursue  their  way  to  Boston,  but  with 
which  in  a  few  years  "all  England  rang  from  side  to 
side."  They  were  Oliver  Cromwell,  and  Hampden,  and 
Haselrig,  Lord  Brook,  and  Lord  Saye. 

Affairs  had  now  reached  such  a  crisis  that  they  could 
no  longer  continue  undecided.  A  Parliament  was 
called  in  1640,  after  an  unexampled  interval  of  eleven 
years,  and,  after  a  few  days'  session,  was  angrily  dis- 
solved. Another,  however,  was  indispensable  in  the 
same  year,  and  on  the  3d  of  November  the  Long  Parlia- 
ment met.  The  long-repressed  indignation  of  the 
Commons  broke  forth  at  once.  Laud  and  Wentworth, 
the  principal  advisers  of  the  king,  were  tried  and  exe- 
cuted, and  precautions  taken,  by  stringent  acts,  to 
prevent  a  recurrence  of  arbitrary  government.  Every- 
where there  seemed  a  rally  in  favour  of  the  Protestant 
or  liberal  cause.  The  death  of  Eichelieu,  the  destroyer 
of  French  freedom,  opened  a  prospect  of  recovered  inde- 
pendence to  the  Huguenots;  the  victories  of  Torstenson 
the  Swede,  worthy  successor  of  Gustavus  Adolphus^ 
brought  down  the  pride  of  the  Austrian  Catholics;  and 
Puritans,  Independents,  and  other  outraged  sects  and 
parties,  by  the  restoration  of  the  Parliament,  got  a  ter- 
rible instrument  of  vengeance  against  their  oppressors. 
A.  dreadful  time,  when  on  both  sides  the  forms  of  law 
were  perverted  to  the  most  lawless  purposes;  when 
peacefully-inclined  citizens  must  have  been  tormented 
with  sad  misgivings  by  the  contending  claims  of  Parlia- 
ment and  King, — a  Parliament  correctly  constituted 
and  in  the  exercise  of  its  recognised  authority.  9  King 


PROTESTANT    VICTORIES.  4C9 

with  no  flaw  to  his  title,  and  professing  his  willingness 
to  limit  himself  to  the  undoubted  prerogatives  of  his 
place.  It  was  probably  a  relief  to  the  undecided  when 
the  arbitrament  was  removed  from  the  court 
of  argument  to  the  field  of  battle.  All  the 
time  of  that  miserable  civil  »N^ar,  the  other  states  of 
Europe  were  in  nearly  as  great  confusion  as  ourselves. 
France  was  torn  to  pieces  by  factions  which  contended 
for  the  mantle  of  the  departed  cardinal ;  Germany  was 
traversed  from  end  to  end  by  alternately  retreating  and 
advancing  armies.  But  still  the  simultaneousness  of 
events  abroad  and  at  home  is  worthy  of  remark.  The 
great  fights  which  decided  the  quarrel  in  England  were 
answered  by  victories  of  the  Protestant  arms  in  Ger- 
many and  the  apparent  triumph  of  the  discontented  in 
France.  The  young  king,  Louis  the  Fourteenth,  car- 
ried from  town  to  town,  and  disputed  between  the 
parties,  gave  little  augury  of  the  despotism  and  injustice 
of  his  future  throne.  There  were  barricades  in  Paris, 
and  insurrections  all  over  the  land.  But  at  last,  and 
at  the  same  time,  all  the  combatants  in  England,  anc^ 
France,  and  Germany — Huguenot,  Puritan,  Calvinist, 
Protestant,  and  Papist — were  tired  out  with  the  length 
and  bitterness  of  the  struggle.  So  in  1648  the  long 
Thirty  Years'  War  was  brought  to  a  close  by  the  Peace 
of  Westphalia.  Kingly  power  in  France  was  curtailed . 
the  house  of  Austria  was  humbled;  and  Charles  waa 
carried  prisoner  to  Windsor.  The  Protestants  of  Ger- 
many, by  the  terms  of  the  peace,  were  replaced  in  their 
ancient  possessions.  They  had  freedom  of  worship  and 
equality  of  civil  rights  secured.  A  general  law  pre- 
served them  from  the  injustice  or  aggressions  of  their 
local  masters;  and  the  compromise  guaranteed  by  so 
many  divergent  interests,  and  guarded  by  such  equally- 
divided  numbers,  has  endured  to  the  present  time.     Thv 


no  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

English  conquerors  would  be  contented  with  no  less 
than  their  foreign  friends  had  obtained.  But  the  blot 
upon  their  conduct,  the  blood  of  the  misguided  and 
humbled  Charles,  hindered  the  result  of  their  wisest 
deliberations.  Moderate  men  were  revolted  by  the  vio- 
lence of  the  act,  and  old  English  loyalty,  delivered  from 
the  fear  of  foreign  or  domestic  oppression,  was  awakened 
,-,.«  bv  the   sad   end  of  a   crowned  and  anointed 

4.D.  1649.     "^ 

King.  Nothing  compensates  in  an  old  here- 
ditary monarchy  for  the  want  of  high  descent  in  its 
ruler.  Not  all  Cromwell's  vigour  and  genius,  his  glory 
abroad  and  energetic  government  at  home,  attracted 
the  veneration  of  English  squires,  whose  forefathers 
had  fought  at  Crecy,  to  the  grandson  of  a  city  knight, 
or,  at  most,  to  the  descendant  of  a  minister  of  Henry 
the  Eighth.  Charles  the  Second  rose  before  them  with 
the  transmitted  dignity  of  a  hundred  kings.  He  counted 
back  to  Scottish  monarchs  before  the  Norman  Conquest, 
and  traced  by  his  mother's  side  his  lineal  ancestry  up  to 
Charlemagne  and  Clovis.  English  history  presents  no 
instance  of  the  intrusion  of  an  unroyal  usurper  in  her 
list  of  sovereigns.  Cromwell  stands  forth  the  solitary 
instance  of  a  man  of  the  people  virtually  seizing  the 
crown;  and  the  ballads  and  pamphlets  of  the  time 
show  how  the  comparative  humility  of  his  birth  excited 
the  scorn  of  his  contemporaries.  And  this  feeling  was 
not  limited  to  ancient  lords  and  belted  cavaliers:  it 
permeated  the  common  mind.  There  was  something 
ennobling  for  the  humblest  peasant  to  die  for  King  and 
Cause;  but,  however  our  traditions  and  the  lapse  of  two 
hundred  years  may  have  elevated  the  conqueror  at 
Worcester  and  Dunbar,  we  are  not  to  forget  that,  in  the 
estimation  of  those  who  had  drunk  his  beer  at  Hunt- 
ingdon or  listened  to  his  tedious  harangues  in  Parlia- 
ment, there  would  be  neither  patriotism  npr  honour  in 


DECLINE    JF   PURITANISM.  471 

dying  for  bluff  Old  Noll.  But  there  were  more  danger- 
ous enemies  to  bluff  Old  Noll  than  the  newness  of  his 
name.  The  same  cause  which  had  made  the  nation  dis- 
satisfied with  the  arbitrary  pretensions  of  James  and 
Charloe  was  at  work  in  making  it  intolerant  of  the  rule 
of  the  usurpers. 

The  great  soldier  and  politician,  w^ho  had  overthrown 
an  ancient  dynasty  and  crushed  the  seditions  of  tho 
Beets,  had  increased  the  commercial  prosperity  of  the 
three  kingdoms.  Wealth  poured  in  at  all  the  ports,  and 
was  rapidly  diffused  over  the  land;  internal  imj^rove- 
ments  kept  pace  with  foreign  enterprise;  and  the  Eng- 
land which  long  ago  had  been  too  rich  to  be  arbitrarily 
governed  was  now  again  too  rich  to  be  kept  in  durance 
by  tho  sour-faced  hypocrisies  of  the  Puritans.  Those 
lank-haired  gentlemen,  whose  conduct  had  not  quite 
answered  to  the  self-denying  proclamations  with  which 
they  had  begun,  were  no  longer  able  to  persuade  tho 
well-to-do  citizen,  and  the  high-waged  mechanic,  and 
the  prosperous  farmer,  that  religion  consisted  in  speak- 
ing through  the  nose  and  forswearing  all  innocent  en- 
joyment. The  great  battle  had  been  fought,  and  the 
fruits  of  it,  they  thought,  were  secure.  Were  people  to 
be  debarred  from  social  meetings  and  merry-makings  at 
Christmas,  and  junketings  at  fairs,  by  act  of  Parlia- 
ment ?  Acts  of  Parliament  would  first  have  been  re- 
quired strong  enough  to  do  away  with  youth  and  health, 
and  tho  power  of  admiring  beauty,  and  the  hopes  of 
A.D.  1641  marriage.     The  troubles  had  lasted  seven  or 

-4^-  eight  years;  and  all  through  that  period,  and. 
for  some  time  before,  while  the  thick  cloud  was  gather- 
ing, all  gayety  had  disappeared  from  the  land.  But  by 
the  middle  of  Cromwell's  time  there  was  a  new  genera- 
tion, in  the  first  flush  of  youth, — lads  and  lasses  who 
oad   been  too  young  to  know  any  thing  of  the   dark 


172 


SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 


days  of  Laud  and  Wentworth.  They  were  twcutj 
years  of  ago  now.  Were  they  to  have  no  cakes  and  ale 
because  their  elders  were  so  prodigiously  virtuous  i' 
They  had  many  years  of  weary  restraint  and  formalism 
to  make  up  for,  and  in  1660  the  accumulated  tide  of 
joyousness  and  delight  burst  all  barriers.  A  flood  of 
dancing  and  revelry,  and  utter  abandonment  to  happi- 
ness,  spread  over  the  whole  country;  and  merriest  of 
the  dancers,  loudest  of  the  revellers,  happiest  of  the 
emancipated,  was  the  young  and  brilliant  king.  Never 
since  the  old  times  of  the  Feasts  of  Fools  and  the 
gaudy  processions  of  the  Carnival  had  there  been  such 
a  riotous  jubilee  as  inaugurated  the  Eestoration.  The 
reaction  against  Puritanism  carried  the  nation  almost 
beyond  Christianity  and  landed  it  in  heathenism  again. 
The  saturnalia  of  Eome  were  renewed  in  the  banquet- 
ings  of  St.  James's.  IS^othing  in  those  first  days  of 
relaxation  seemed  real.  King  and  courtiers  and  cava- 
liers in  courtly  palaces,  and  enthusiastic  townsfolk  and 
madly  loyal  husbandmen,  seemed  like  mummers  at  a 
play ;  and  it  was  not  till  the  candles  were  burned  out, 
and  the  scenes  grew  dingy,  and  daylight  poured  upon 
that  ghastly  imitation  of  enjoyment,  that  England  came 
to  its  sober  senses  again.  Then  it  saw  how  false  was 
the  parody  it  had  been  playing.  It  had  not  been 
happy ;  it  had  only  been  drunk ;  and  already,  while 
Charles  was  in  the  gloss  of  his  recovered  crown,  the 
second  reaction  began.  Cromwell  became  respectable 
by  comparison  with  the  sensual  debauchee  who  sold  the 
dignity  of  his  country  for  a  little  present  enjoyment 
and  soothed  the  reproaches  of  his  people  with  a  joifo. 
Give  us  a  Man  to  rule  over  us,  the  English  said,  ard  not 
a  sayer  of  witty  sayings  and  a  juggler  with  such  sleight 
of  hand.  And  yet  the  example  of  the  court  was  so  con- 
tagious, and  the  fashion  of  enjoyment  so  vvide-spread. 


ENGLAND   DEGRADED.  4/C 

that  on  tho  surface  every  thing  aj^peared  prosperous 
and  happy.  The  stern  realities  of  the  first  recusants 
had  been  so  travestied  by  the  exaggerated  imitation  of 
their  successors  that  no  faith  was  placed  in  the  serious 
earnestness  of  man  or  woman.  Frivolity  was  therefore 
adopted  as  a  mark  of  sense ;  and  if  the  popular  litera- 
ture of  a  period  is  to  be  accepted  as  a  mirror  held  up  to 
Bhow  the  time  its  image,  the  old  English  character  had 
undergone  a  perfect  change.  Thousands  flocked  every 
day  to  the  playhouses  to  listen  to  dialogues,  and  watch 
the  evolvement  of  plots,  where  all  the  laws  of  decency 
and  honour  were  held  up  to  ridicule.  Comus  and  his 
crew,  which  long  ago  had  held  their  poetic  festival  in 
the  pure  pages  of  Milton,  were  let  loose,  without  the 
purity  or  the  poetry,  in  every  family  circle.  And  the 
worst  and  most  disgusting  feature  of  the  picture  is  that 
those  wassailers  who  were  thus  the  missionaries  of  vice 
were  persecutors  for  religion.  While  one  royal  brother 
was  leading  the  revels  at  "Whitehall,  surrounded  by 
luxury  and  immorality  as  by  an  atmosphere  without 
which  he  could  not  live,  the  other,  as  luxurious,  but 
more  moodily  depraved,  listened  to  the  groans  of  tor- 
tured Covenanters  at  Holyrood  House.  Charles  and 
James  were  like  the  two  executioners  of  Louis  the 
Eleventh :  one  laughed,  and  the  other  groaned,  but  both 
were  pitilessly  cruel.  A  recurrence  to  the  dark  days  of 
the  Sects,  the  godly  wrestlings  in  prayer  of  illiterate 
horsemen,  and  the  sincere  fanaticism  of  the  Fifth-Mon- 
archy men,  would  have  been  a  change  for  the  better 
from  the  filth  and  foulness  of  the  reign  of  tho  Merry 
Monarch  and  the  blood  and  misery  of  that  of  the  gloomy 
Digot. 

But  happier  times  were  almost  within  view,  though 
fltill  hid  behind  the  glare  of  those  orgies  of  the  unclean. 
From  1660  to  1688  does  not  seem  a  very  long  time  in 


^74  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

the  annals  of  a  nation,  nor  even  in  the  life  of  one  of 
ourselves.  Twenty-eight  years  have  elapsed  since  the 
Revolution  in  Paris  which  placed  Louis  Philippe  upon 
the  throne ;  and  the  young  man  of  twenty  at  that  time 
is  not  very  old  yet.  But  when  men  or  nations  are 
cheated  in  the  object  of  their  hopes,  it  does  not  take 
Jong  to  turn  disappointment  into  hatred.  The  Eestora- 
tion  of  1660  was  to  bring  back  the  golden  age  of  the 
first  years  of  James, — the  prosperity  without  the 
tyranny,  the  old  hereditary  rule  without  its  high  pre- 
tensions, the  manliness  of  the  English  yeoman  without 
his  tendency  to  fanatical  innovation.  And  instead  of 
this  Arcadia  there  was  nothing  to  be  seen  but  a  king- 
dom without  dignity,  a  king  without  honesty,  and  a 
people  without  independence.  England  was  no  longer 
the  arbiter  of  European  differences,  as  in  the  earliei 
reigns,  nor  dominator  of  all  the  nations,  as  when  the 
heavy  sword  of  Cromwell  was  uneasy  in  its  sheath.  It 
was  not  even  a  second-rate  power :  its  capital  had  been 
insulted  by  the  Dutch ;  its  monarch  was  pensioned  by 
the  French;  its  religion  was  threatened  by  the  Pope; 
the  old  animosities  between  England  and  Scotland  were 
unarranged ;  and  the  point  to  be  remembered  in  your 
review  of  the  Seventeenth  Century  is  that  in  the  years 
from  the  Eestoration  to  the  Revolution  we  had  touched 
the  basest  string  of  humility.  "We  were  neither  united 
at  home  nor  respected  abroad.  "We  had  few  ships,  little 
commerce,  and  no  public  spirit.  France  revenged  Crecy 
and  Poictiers  and  Agincourt,  by  dressing  our  kings  in 
her  livery ;  and  the  degraded  monarchs  pocketed  their 
wages  without  feeling  their  humiliation.  Therefore,  as 
the  highest  point  we  have  hitherto  stood  upon  was  when 
Elizabeth  saw  the  destruction  of  the  Armada,  the  lowest 
was  undoubtedly  that  when  we  submitted  to  the  buf 
foonery  of  Charles  and  the  bloodthirstiness  of  James. 


LOUIS  THE  FOURTEENTH.  476 

liut  far  more  remarkable,  as  a  characteristic  of  this 
eentury,  than  the  lowering  of  the  rank  of  England  in 
relation  to  foreign  states,  is  the  rise,  for  the  first  time 
in  Europe,  of  a  figure  hitherto  unknown, — a  true,  un- 
shackled, and  absolute  king,  and  that  in  the  least  likely 
of  all  positions  and  in  the  person  of  the  least  likely 
man.  This  was  the  appearance  on  the  throne  of  France 
of  Louis  the  Fourteenth.  Other  monarchs,  both  in 
England  and  France,  had  attained  supreme  power, — 
supreme,  but  not  independent.  No  one  had  hitherto 
been  irresponsible  to  some  other  portions  of  the  State. 
The  strongest  of  the  feudal  kings  was  held  in  check  by 
his  nobility, — the  greatest  of  the  Tudors  by  Parliament 
and  people.  Declarations,  indeed,  had  frequently  been 
made  that  God's  anointed  were  answerable  to  God 
alone.  But  of  the  two  loudest  of  these  declaimers, 
John,  who  said, — 

"What  earthly  power  to  interrogatory 
Can  tax  the  free  breath  of  a  Christian  king  ?" 

had  shortly  after  this  magnificent  oration  surrendered 
his  crown  to  the  Pope ;  and  James  the  First,  who  blus- 
tered more  fiercely  (if  possible}  about  his  superiority  to 
human  law,  was  glad  to  bend  before  his  Lords  and 
Commons  in  anticipation  of  a  subsidy,  and  eat  his  leek 
in  peace. 

But  this  phenomenon  of  a  king  above  all  other 
authority  occurred,  we  have  observed,  in  the  most 
unlikely  country  to  present  so  strange  a  sight ;  for  no- 
where was  a  European  throne  so  weak  and  unstable  as 
the  throne  of  the  house  of  Bourbon  after  the  murder  of 
Henry  the  Fourth.  The  moment  that  strong  hand  was 
withdrawn  from  the  government,  all  classes  broke  loose. 
The  nobles  conspired  against  the  queen,  Marie  de  Medi- 
cis,  who  relied  upon  foreign  favourites  and  irritated  the 
nation  to  madness.    Paris  rose  in  insurrection,  and  tore 


i76  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

the  wretched  Concini,  her  counsellor,  whom  she  had 
created  Marshal  D'Ancre,  to  pieces;  and,  to  glut  their 
vengeance  still  more,  the  judges  condemned  his  inno- 
cent wife  to  he  burned  as  a  sorceress.  Louis  the  Thir« 
teenth,  the  unworthy  son  of  the  great  Henry,  rejoiced 
in  these  atrocities,  which  he  thought  freed  him  from  all 
restraint.  But  he  found  it  impossible  to  quell  the  wild 
passions  by  which  he  profited  for  a  while.  Civil  war 
raged  between  the  court  and  country  factions,  and  soon 
,^„„  became   embittered  into  religious  animosities. 

A.D.  1622.  .  ^ 

The  sight  of  a  king  marching  at  the  head  of  a 
Catholic  army  against  a  portion  of  his  Eeformed  sub- 
jects was  looked  upon  by  the  rapidly-increasing  mal- 
contents in  England  with  anxious  curiosity.  For  year 
by  year  the  strange  spectacle  was  unrolled  before  their 
eyes  of  what  might  yet  be  their  fate  at  home.  Perhaps, 
indeed,  the  success  of  the  royal  arms,  and  the  policy  of 
strength  and  firmness  introduced  by  Cardinal  Eichelieu, 
may  have  contributed  in  no  slight  degree  to  the  measures 
pursued  by  Wentworth  and  Laud  in  their  treatment  of 
the  English  recusants.  With  an  anticipative  interest  in 
our  Hull  and  Exeter,  the  Puritans  of  England  looked  on 
the  resistance  made  by  Eochelle ;  and  we  can  therefore 
easily  imagine  with  what  feelings  the  future  soldiers  of 
Marston  Moor  received  the  tidings  that  the  Popish 
cardinal  had  humbled  the  capital  of  the  Huguenots  by 
the  help  of  fleets  furnished  to  them  by  Holland  and 
England !  Richelieu,  indeed,  knew  how  to  make  his 
enemies  weaken  each  other  throughout  his  whole  career. 

Those  enemies  were  the  nobility  of  France,  the 
'  house  of  Austria,  and  the  Eeformed  Faith.  When 
Eochelle  was  attacked  the  second  time,  and  England 
pretended  to  arm  for  its  defence,  he  contrived  to  win 
Buckingham,  the  chief  of  the  expedition,  to  his  cause, 
and  procured  a  letter  from  King  Charles,  placing  the 


RICHELIEU.  477 

fleet,  which  apparently  went  to  tlie  support  of  tho 
Huguenots,  at  the  service  of  the  King  of  France' 
After  a  year's  siege,  and  the  most  heroic  resistance, 
Rochelle  fell  at  last,  in  1628.  And,  now  that  the  Hugue- 
nots were  destroyed  as  a  dangerous  party,  the  eyes  of 
the  great  minister  were  turned  against  his  other  foes. 
He  divided  the  nohles  into  hostile  ranks,  degraded  them 
by  petty  annoyances,  terrified  them  by  unpitying  execu- 
tions of  the  chiefs  of  the  oldest  families,  showed  their 
weakness  by  arresting  marshals  at  the  head  of  their 
armies,  and  during  the  remaining  years  of  his  authority 
monopolized  all  the  powers  of  the  state.  To  weaken 
Spain  and  Austria,  we  have  seen  how  he  assisted  the 
Protestants  in  the  Thirty  Years'  "War ;  to  weaken  Eng- 
land, which  was  only  great  when  it  assumed  its  place  as 
bulwark  and  champion  of  the  Protestant  faith,  he  en- 
couraged the  court  in  its  suicidal  policy  and  the 
oppressed  population  in  resistance.  Ever  stirring  up 
trouble  abroad,  and  ever  busy  in  repressing  liberty  at 
home,  the  ministry  of  Eichelieu  is  the  triumph  of  un- 
principled skill.  But  when  he  died,  in  1643,  there  was 
no  man  left  to  lift  up  the  burden  he  threw  off.  The 
king  himself,  Louis  the  Thii*teenth,  as  much  a  puppet 
as  the  old  descendants  of  Clovis  under  their  Mayors  of 
the  Palace,  left  the  throne  he  had  nominally  filled, 
vacant  in  the  same  year;  and  the  heir  to  the  dis- 
honoured crown  and  exhausted  country  was  a  boy  of 
five  years  of  age,  under  the  tutelage  of  an  unprincipled 
mother,  and  with  the  old  hereditary  counsellors  and 
props  of  his  throne  decimated  by  the  scaffold  or  im- 
poverished by  confiscation.  The  tyranny  of  Eichelieu 
had  at  least  attained  something  noble  by  the  high-handed 
inBolence  of  all  his  acts.  If  people  were  to  be  trampled 
on,  it  was  a  kind  of  consolation  to  them  that  their  op« 
pressor  was  feared  by  others   as  well  as  themselves 


*78  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

But  the  oppression  of  the  doomed  French  nation  was  tc 
be  continued  by  a  more  ignoble  hand.  The  Cardinal 
Mazarin  brought  every  thing  into  greater  confusion 
than  ever.  In  twenty  millions  of  men  there  will  alwaya 
be  great  and  overmastering  spirits,  if  only  an  opportu- 
nity is  found  for  their  development ;  but  civil  commo- 
lion  is  not  the  element  in  which  greatness  lives.  All 
Bensc  of  honour  disappears  when  conduct  is  regulated 
A.D.  1648  t>y  the  shifting  motives  of  party  politics.     The 

-1654.  dissensions  of  the  Fronde,  accordingly,  produced 
no  champion  to  whom  either  side  could  look  with  un- 
mingled  respect.  The  Great  Conde  and  the  famous 
Turenne  showed  military  talent  of  the  highest  order, 
but  a  want  of  principle  and  a  flighty  frivolity  of  cha- 
racter counterbalanced  all  their  virtues.  The  scenes  of 
those  six  years  are  like  a  series  of  dissolving  views,  or 
the  changing  combinations  of  a  kaleidoscope :  Conde  and 
Turenne,  always  on  opposite  sides, — for  each  changed 
his  party  as  often  as  the  other;  battles  prepared  for  by 
masquerades  and  theatricals,  and  celebrated  on  both 
sides  with  epigrams  and  songs;  the  wildest  excesses  of 
debauchery  and  vice  practised  by  both  sexes  and  all 
ranks  in  the  State ;  archbishops  fighting  like  gladiators 
and  intriguing  like  the  vulgarest  conspirators;  princes 
imprisoned  with  a  jest,  and  executions  attended  with 
cheers  and  laughter;  and  over  all  an  Italian  ecclesiastic, 
grinning  with  satisfaction  at  the  increase  of  his  wealth, 
— caballing,  cheating,  and  lying,  but  keeping  a  firm 
grasp  of  power: — no  country  was  ever  so  split  into 
faction  or  so  denuded  of  great  men. 

It  seemed,  indeed,  like  a  demoniacal  caricature  of  our 
British  troubles :  no  sternness,  no  reality ;  love-letters 
and  witty  verses  supplying  the  place  of  the  Biblical  lan- 
guage and  awful  earnestness  of  the  words  and  deeds  of 
the  Covenanters  and  Independents;  the  gentlemen  of 


I>ESPOTISM   OF  LOUIS  XIV.  47« 

France  utterly  debased  and  frivolized;  religion  ridi- 
culed; nothing  left  of  the  old  landmarks;  and  no  Crom- 
well possible.  But,  while  all  these  elements  of  confu- 
sion were  heaving  and  tumbling  in  what  seemed  an 
inextricable  chaos,  Mazarin,  the  vainest  and  most  selfish 
of  charlatans,  died,  and  the  young  king,  whom  he  had 
kept  in  distressing  dependence  and  the  profoundcst 
political  inactivity,  found  himself  delivered  from  ft 
master  and  free  to  choose  his  path.  This  was  in  1661. 
Charles  and  Louis  were  equally  on  their  recovered 
thrones ;  for  what  exile  had  been  to  the  one,  Mazarin 
A.D.  1641  had  been  to  the  other.  Charles  had  had  the 
-1660.  experience  of  nineteen  years  and  of  various 
fortunes  to  guide  him.  He  had  seen  many  men  and 
cities,  and  he  deceived  every  expectation.  Louis  had 
been  studiously  brought  up  by  his  mother  and  her 
Italian  favourite  in  the  abasement  of  every  lofty  aspira- 
tion. He  was  only  encouraged  in  luxury  and  vice,  and 
kept  in  such  painful  vassalage  that  his  shyness  and 
awkwardness  revealed  the  absence  of  self-respect  to  the 
very  pages  of  his  court;  and  he,  no  less  than  Charles, 
deceived  all  the  expectations  that  had  been  formed 
of  his  career.  He  found  out,  as  if  by  intuition,  how 
brightly  the  monarchical  principle  still  burned  in  the 
heart  of  all  the  French.  Even  in  their  fights  and  quar- 
rellings  there  was  a  deep  reverence  entertained  for  the 
ideal  of  the  throne.  The  King's  name  was  a  tower  of 
strength;  and  when  the  nation,  in  the  course  of  the 
miserable  years  from  1610  to  1661,  saw  the  extinction 
of  nobility,  religion,  law,  and  almost  of  civilized  society 
it  caught  the  first  sound  that  told  it  it  still  had  a  king, 
as  an  echo  from  the  past  assuring  it  of  its  future.  It 
forgot  Louis  the  Thirteenth  and  Anne  of  Austria,  and 
only  remembered  that  its  monarch  was  the  grandson  of 
Henry  the  Fourth.    Nobody  remembered  that  circura 


'*80  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

stance  so  vividly  as  Louis  himself;  but  lie  remembered 
also  that  his  line  went  upwards  from  the  Bourbons,  and 
included  the  Saint  Louis  of  the  ^thirteenth  century  and 
the  renewer  of  the  Eoman  Empire  of  the  ninth.  He 
let  the  world  know,  therefore,  that  his  title  was  Most 
Christian  King  as  well  as  foremost  of  European  powers. 
He  forced  Spain  to  yield  him  precedence,  and,  for  the 
first  time  in  history,  exacted  a  humiliating  apology  from 
the  Pope.  The  world  is  always  apt  to  take  a  man  at 
his  own  valuation.  Louis,  swelling  with  pride,  ambitious 
of  fame,  and  madly  fond  of  power,  declared  himself  the 
greatest,  wisest,  and  most  magnificent  of  men;  and 
everybody  believed  him.  Every  thing  was  soon  changed 
throughout  the  land.  Ministers  had  been  more  powerful 
than  the  crown,  and  had  held  unlimited  authority  in 
right  of  their  appointment.  A  minister  was  nothing 
more  to  Louis  than  a  valet-de-chambre.  He  gave  him 
certain  work  to  do,  and  rewarded  him  if  he  did  it;  if 
he  neglected  it,  he  discharged  him.  At  first  the  few 
relics  of  the  historic  names  of  France,  the  descendants 
of  the  great  vassals,  who  carried  their  heads  as  lofty  as 
the  Capets  or  Yalois,  looked  on  with  surprise  at  the 
new  arrangements  in  camp  and  court.  But  the  people 
were  too  happy  to  escape  the  oligarchic  confederacy  of 
those  hereditary  oppressors  to  encourage  them  in  their 
haughty  disaifection.  Before  Louis  had  been  three 
years  on  the  unovershadowed  throne,  the  struggle  had 
been  fairly  entered  on  by  all  the  orders  of  the  State, 
which  should  be  most  slavish  in  its  submission.  Eank, 
talent,  beauty,  science,  and  military  fame  all  vied  with 
each  other  in  their  devotion  to  the  king.  He  would 
have  been  more  than  mortal  if  he  had  retained  his 
eenses  unimpaired  amid  the  intoxicating  fumes  of  such 
incense.  Success  in  more  important  aflkirs  came  to  the 
Mupport  of  his  personal  assumptions.    Yictories  followed 


CARES    OF   ROYALTY. 


481 


tis  standards  everywhere.  Generals,  engineers,  and  ad 
ministrators,  of  abilities  hitherto  unmatched  in  Europe, 
sprang  up  whenever  his  requirements  called  them  forth. 
Colbert  doubled  his  income  without  increasing  the 
burdens  on  his  people.  Turenne,  Conde,  Luxembourg, 
and  twenty  others,  led  his  armies.  Yauban  strengthened 
his  fortifications  or  conducted  his  sieges,  and  the  dock- 
yards of  Toulon  and  Brest  filled  the  Mediterranean  and 
tho  Atlantic  with  his  fleets.  Poets  like  Moliere,  Cor- 
neille,  and  Eacine  ennobled  his  stage ;  while  the  genius 
of  Bossuet  and  Fenelon  inaugurated  the  restoration  of 
religion.  For  eight-and-twenty  years  his  fortunes  knew 
no  ebb.  He  was  the  object  of  all  men's  hopes  and  fears, 
and  almost  of  their  prayers.  Nothing  was  too  great  or 
too  minute  for  his  decision.  He  was  called  on  to  arbi- 
trate (with  the  authority  of  a  master)  between  sove- 
reign States,  and  to  regulate  a  point  of  precedence  be- 
tween the  duchesses  of  his  court.  Oh,  the  weary  days 
and  nights  of  that  uneasy  splendour  at  Versailles !  when 
his  steps  were  watched  by  hungry  courtiers,  and  his 
bed  itself  surrounded  by  applicants  for  place  and  favour. 
Xo  galley-slave  ever  toiled  harder  at  his  oar  than  this 
monarch  of  all  he  surveyed  at  the  management  of  his 
unruly  family.  It  was  the  day  of  etiquette  and  form. 
The  rights  of  princesses  to  arm-chairs  or  chairs  with 
only  a  back  were  contested  with  a  vigour  which  might 
have  settled  the  succession  to  a  throne.  Tho  rank 
which  entitled  to  a  seat  in  the  king's  coach  or  an  invi- 
tation to  Marly  was  disputed  almost  with  bloodshed, 
and  certainly  with  scandal  and  bitterness.  Tho  depth 
of  the  bows  exacted  by  a  prince  of  the  blood,  the 
number  of  attendants  necessary  for  a  legitimated  son 
of  La  Yalliero  or  Montespan,  put  tho  whole  court  into 
4  turmoil  of  angry  parties;  and  all  these  important 
points,  and  fifty  more  of  equal  magnitude,  were  formally 
21 


*82  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

submitted  to  the  king  and  decided  with  ji  gravity  befit 
ting  a  weightier  cause.  Nothing  is  more  remarkable  in 
the  midst  of  these  absurd  inanities  than  the  great  fund 
of  good  common  sense  that  is  found  in  all  the  king's 
judgments.  He  meditates,  and  temporizes,  and  reasons ; 
and  only  on  great  occasions,  such  as  a  quarrel  about  dig- 
nity between  the  wife  of  the  dauphin  and  the  Duchess 
of  Maine,  does  he  put  on  the  terrors  of  his  kingly  frown 
and  interpose  his  irresistible  command.  It  would  have 
been  some  consolation  to  the  foreign  potentates  ho 
bullied  or  protected — the  Austrian  and  Spaniard,  or 
Charles  in  "Whitehall — if  they  had  known  what  a 
wretched  and  undignified  life  their  enslaver  and  insulter 
lived  at  home.  It  was  whispered,  indeed,  that  he  w^as 
tremendously  hen-pecked  by  Madame  de  Maintenon, 
whom  he  married  without  having  the  courage  to  elevate 
her  to  the  throne;  but  none  of  them  knew  the  petti- 
nesses, the  degradations,  and  the  miseries  of  his  inner 
circle.  They  thought,  perhaps,  he  was  planning  some 
innovation  in  the  order  of  afi'airs  in  Europe, — the  de- 
struction of  a  kingdom.  Or  the  change  of  a  dynasty. 
He  was  devoting  his  deepest  cogitations  to  the  arrange- 
ment of  a  quarrel  between  his  sons  and  his  daughters-in- 
law,  the  invitations  to  a  little  supper-party  in  his  private 
room,  or  the  number  of  steps  it  was  necessary  to  ad- 
vance at  the  reception  of  a  petty  Italian  sovereign.  The 
quarrels  between  his  children  became  more  bitter;  the 
little  supper-parties  became  more  dull.  Death  came  into 
the  gilded  chambers,  and  he  was  growing  old  and  deso- 
late. Still  the  torturing  wheel  of  ceremony  went  round, 
and  the  father,  with  breaking  heart,  had  to  leave  the 
chamber  of  his  deceased  son,  and  act  the  part  of  a 
great  king,  and  go  through  the  samq  tedious  forms  of 
grandeur  and  routine  which  he  had  done  before  the 
calamity  came.     Fancy  has  never  drawn  a  persouagfl 


EDICT   CF  NANTES   REPEALED.  483 

more  truly  pitiable  than  Louis  growing  feeble  and  friend^ 
less  in  the  midst  of  all  that  magnificence  and  all  that 
heartless  crowd.  You  pardon  him  for  retiring  for  con- 
Bolation  and  sympathy  to  the  quiet  apartment  where 
Madame  de  Maintenon  received  him  without  formality 
and  continued  her  needlework  or  her  reading  while  he 
was  engaged  in  council  with  his  ministers.  He  must 
have  known  that  to  all  but  her  he  was  an  Office  and  not 
a  Man.  He  yearned  for  somebody  that  he  could  trust 
in  and  consult  with,  as  entering  into  his  thoughts  and  in- 
terests; and  that  calm-blooded,  meek-mannered,  narrow- 
Learted  woman  persuaded  him  that  m  her  ho  had  found 
all  that  his  heart  thirsted  for  in  the  desert  of  his  royalty. 
But  in  that  little  apartment  he  was  now  to  find  refuge 
from  more  serious  calamities  than  the  falsehood  of 
courtiers  or  the  quarrels  of  women.  Even  French 
loyalty  was  worn  out  at  last.  Victories  had  glorified 
the  monarch,  but  brought  poverty  and  loss  to  the  popu- 
lation. Complaints  arose  in  all  parts  of  the  country  of 
the  excess  of  taxation,  the  grasping  dishonesty  of  the 
collectors,  the  extravagance  of  the  court,  and  even — but 
this  was  not  openly  whispered — the  selfishness  of  the 
king.  He  had  lavished  ten  millions  sterling  on  the 
palace  and  gardens  of  Versailles ;  he  had  enriched  his 
Bycophants  with  pensions  on  the  Treasury;  he  had 
gratified  the  Church  with  gorgeous  donations,  and  with 
the  far  more  fatal  gift  of  vengeance  upon  its  opponents. 
The  Huguenots  were  in  the  peaceful  enjoyment  of  the 
rights  secured  to  them  by  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  granted 
by  Henry  the  Fourth  in  1598.  T3ut  those  rights  in- 
cluded the  right  of  worshipping  God  in  a  different 
manner  from  the  Church,  and  denying  the  distinguish- 
ing doctrines  of  the  Holy  Catholic  faith.  The  Edict  of 
Toleration  was  repealed  as  a  blot  on  the  purity 
of   the  throne   of   the   Most   Christian    King 


*8*  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Thousands  of  the  best  workmen  in  France  wci^  ban- 
ished  by  this  impolitic  proceeding,  and  Louis  tliought  he 
had  shown  his  attachment  to  his  religion  by  sending  the 
ingenuity  and  wealth,  and  glowing  animosity,  of  the  most 
valuable  portion  of  his  subjects  into  other  lands.  Ger- 
many calculated  that  the  depopulation  caused  by  his 
wars  was  more  than  compensated  by  the  immigration. 
England  could  forgive  him  his  contemptuous  behaviour  to 
her  king  and  Parliament  when  she  saw  the  silk-mills  of 
Spitalfields  supplied  by  the  skilled  workmen  of  Lyons. 
Eight  hundred  thousand  people  left  their  homes  in  con- 
sequence of  this  proscription  of  their  religion,  and  Ger- 
many and  Switzerland  grew  rich  with  the  stream  of 
fugitives.  It  is  said  that  only  five  thousand  found  their 
way  to  this  country, — enough,  to  set  the  example  of 
peaceful  industry  and  to  introduce  new  methods  of 
manufacture. 

But  the  full  benefit  of  the  measures  of  Louis  and 
Maintenon  was  denied  us,  by  the  distrust  with  which 
the  Protestant  exiles  looked  on  the  accession  to  our 
throne  of  a  narrower  despot  and  more  bigoted  persecu- 
tor than  Louis ;  for  in  this  same  year  James  the  Second 
succeeded  Charles.  Relying  on  each  other's  support, 
and  gratified  with  the  formal  approval  of  the  repeal  of 
the  Edict  of  Nantes  pronounced  by  the  Pope,  the  two 
champions  of  Christendom  pursued  their  way, — dis- 
missals from  office,  exclusion  from  promotion,  proscrip- 
tion from  worship  in  France,  and  assaults  on  the  Church, 
and  bloody  assizes,  in  England, — till  all  the  nations  felt 
that  a  great  crisis  was  reached  in  the  fortunes  both  of 
England  and  France,  and  Protestant  and  Eomanist 
alike  looked  on  in  expectation  of  the  winding-up  of  so 
strange  a  history.  Judicial  blindness  was  equally  on 
ths  eyes  of  the  two  potentates  chiefly  interested.  James 
remained  inactive  while  William  Prince  of  Orange,  the 


ABDICATION   OP  JAMES   II. 


485 


avowed  chief  of  the  new  opinions,  was  getting  ready 
his  ships  and  army,  and  congratulated  himself  on  the 
silence  of  his  people,  which  he  thought  was  the  sign  of 
their  acquiescence  instead  of  the  hush  of  expectation. 
All  the  other  powers — the  Papal  Chair  included — were 
not  sorry  to  see  a  counterpoise  to  the  predominance  of 
France ;  and  when  William  appeared  in  England  as  the 
„„  deliverer  from  Popery  and  oppression,  the  battle 

A.D.  1688.  ,        .  ,      ,  .    f  ,1  -r 

was  decided  without  a  blow.  James  was  a 
fugitive  in  his  turn,  and  found  his  way  to  Versailles. 
It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  any  of  the  blood  of  Scot- 
land or  Navarre  flowed  in  the  veins  of  the  pusillanimous 
king.  Ho  begged  his  protector,  through  whose  councils 
he  had  lost  his  kingdom,  to  give  it  him  back  again ;  and 
the  opportunity  of  a  theatrical  display  of  grandeur  and 
magnanimity  was  too  tempting  to  be  thrown  away. 
Louis  promised  to  restore  him  his  crown,  as  if  it  were 
a  broken  toy.  It  was  a  strange  sight,  during  ihe  re- 
mainder of  their  lives,  to  see  those  two  monarchs  keep- 
ing up  the  dignity  of  their  rank  by  exaggerations  of 
their  former  state.  No  mimic  stage  ever  presented  a 
more  piteous  spectacle  of  poverty  and  tinsel  than  the 
royal  pair.  Punctilios  were  observed  at  their  meetings 
and  separations,  as  if  a  bow  more  or  less  were  of  as 
much  consequence  as  the  bestowal  or  recovery  of  Great 
Britain;  and  in  the  estimation  of  those  professors  of 
manners  and  deportment  a  breach  of  etiquette  would 
have  been  more  serious  than  La  Hogue  or  the  Boyne. 
In  that  wondrous  palace  of  Yersailles  all  things  had 
long  ceased  to  be  real.  Speeches  were  made  for  effect, 
and  dresses  and  decorations  had  become  a  part  of  the 
art  of  governing,  and  for  some  years  the  system  seemed 
to  succeed.  When  the  king  required  to  show  that  ho 
was  still  a  conqueror  like  Alexander  the  Great,  prepara- 
iions  were  made  for  his  reception  at  the  seat  of  war, 


*86  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

and  a  pre-arranged  victory  was  attached  to  his  arrival, 
as  Cleopatra  wished  to  fix  a  broiled  fish  to  Anthony's 
hook.  He  entered  the  town  of  Mons  in  triumph  when 
Luxembourg  had  secured  its  fall.  He  appeared  also 
with  unbounded  applause  at  the  first  siege  of  Namur, 
and  carried  in  person  the  news  of  his  achievement  to 
Versailles.  Every  day  came  couriers  hot  and  tired  with 
intelligence  of  fresh  successes.  Luxembourg  conquered 
at  Fleurus,  1690;  Catinat  conquered  Savoy,  1691;  Lux- 
embourg again,  in  1692,  had  gained  the  great  day  of 
Steinkirk,  and  Kerwinde  in  1693.  But  the  tide  now 
turned.  "William  the  Third  was  the  representative  at 
that  time  of  the  stubbornness  of  his  new  subjects' 
character,  who  have  always  found  it  difficult  to  see  that 
they  were  defeated.  He  was  generally  forced  to  retire 
after  a  vigorously-contested  fight;  but  he  was  always 
ready  to  fight  again  next  day,  always  calm  and  deter- 
mined, and  as  confident  as  ever  in  the  firmness  of  his 
men.  Eeports  very  different  from  the  glorious  bulletins 
of  the  earlier  years  of  the  Great  Monarch  now  came 
pouring  in.  Namur  was  retaken,  Dieppe  and  Havre 
bombarded,  all  the  French  establishments  in  India 
seized  by  the  Dutch,  their  colony  at  St.  Domingo  cap- 
tured by  the  English,  Luxembourg  dead,  and  the  whole 
land  again,  for  the  second  time,  exhausted  of  men  and 
money.  It  was  another  opportunity  for  the  display  of 
his  absolute  power.  France  prayed  him  to  grant  peace 
to  Europe,  and  the  earthly  divinity  granted  France's 
prayer.  Europe  itself,  which  had  rebelled  against  him, 
accepted  the  pacification  it  had  won  by  its  battles  and 
combinations,  as  if  it  were  a  gift  from  a  superior  being. 
He  surrendered  his  conquests  with  such  grandeur,  and 
looked  so  dignified  while  he  withdrew  his  pretensions, 
acknowledging  the  Prince  of  Orange  to  be  King  of 
England,  and  the  King  of  England  to  have  no  claim  ob 


DEPRESSION   OF  FRANCE.  487 

the  crown  he  had  promised  to  restore  to  him,  that  it 
ifin-T  took  some  time  to  perceive  that  the  terms  of  the 

l.D.  1697.  ^ 

Peace  of  Eyswick  were  proofs  of  weakness  and 
not  of  magnanimity.  But  the  object  of  his  life  had 
been  gained.  He  had  abased  every  order  in  the  State 
for  the  aggrandizement  of  the  Crown,  and,  for  the  first 
time  since  the  termination  of  the  Roman  Empire,  had 
concentrated  the  whole  power  of  a  nation  into  the  will 
of  an  individual.  And  this  strange  spectacle  of  a  pos- 
sessor of  unlimited  authority  over  the  lives  and  fortunes 
of  all  his  subjects  was  presented  in  an  age  that  had 
seen  Charles  the  First  of  England  brought  to  the  block 
and  James  the  Second  driven  into  exile !  The  chance 
of  France's  peacefully  rising  again  from  this  state  of  de- 
pression into  liberty  would  have  been  greater  if  Louis, 
in  displacing  the  other  authorities,  had  not  disgraced 
them.  He  dissolved  his  Parliament,  not  with  a  file  of 
soldiers,  like  Cromwell  or  Napoleon,  but  with  a  riding- 
whip  in  his  hand.  He  degraded  the  nobility  by  making 
them  the  satellites  of  his  throne  and  creatures  of  his 
favour.  He  humbled  the  Church  by  secularizing  its 
leaders;  so  that  Bossuet,  bishop  and  orator  as  he  was, 
was  proud  to  undertake  the  office  of  peacemaker  between 
him  and  Madame  de  Montespan  in  one  of  their  lovers' 
quarrels.  And  the  Frenchmen  of  the  next  century 
looked  in  vain  for  some  rallying-point  from  which  to 
begin  their  forward  course  towards  constitutional  im- 
provement. They  found  nothing  but  parliaments  con- 
temned, nobles  dishonoured,  and  priests  unchristianized 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


lyings  of  dFtance.    Kings  of  ISnglanTiantxScotlanti. 

i.O.  A.D. 

Louis  XIV. — {cont )  William  III.  and  Mart.— 

1715.  Louis  XV.  [coni.) 

1774.  Louis  XVI.  1702.  Anne. 
1793.  Louis  XVII.  (^Qreat  Britain,  1707.) 

ISmperors  of  (&txmanvi.  ]'^]^'  ^^''''^^  ]'   \  House  of 

^  17^.  George  n.    Uanover. 

Leopold  L-(canO  1760.  George  IIL  ) 
1705.  Joseph  I. 

1711.  Charles  VI.  ItmgS  Of  SpcilH. 

1740.  Maria-Theresa.  1700.  Philip  V. 

1742.  Charles  VII.  1724.  Louis  I. 

1745.  Francis  I.  1724.  Philip  V.  again. 

1765.  Joseph  II.  1745.  Ferdinand  VI. 

1790.  Leopold  II.  1759.  Charles  III. 

1792.  Francis  II.  1788.  Charles  IV. 

UBistinsuisjeti  Mtn, 

Addison,  Steele,  Swift,  Pope,  Robertson,  Hume,  Gibbon, 
Voltaire,  Rousseau,  Lesage,  Marmontel,  Montesquieu,  Frank- 
lin, (1706-1790,)  Johnson,  (1709-1784,)  Goldsmith,  (1728-1774,) 
Wolfe,  (1726-1759,)  Washington,  (1732-1799.) 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY. 

INDIA — ^AMERICA — FRANCE. 

The  characteristic  feature  of  this  period  is  constant 
change  on  the  greatest  scale.  Hitherto  changes  have 
occurred  in  the  internal  government  of  nations:  the 
monarchic  or  popular  feeling  has  found  its  expression  in 
the  alternate  elevation  of  the  Kingly  or  Parliamentary- 
power.  But  in  this  most  momentous  of  the  centuries, 
nations ,  themselves  come  into  being  or  disappear. 
Eussia  and  Prussia  for  the  first  time  play  conspicuous 
parts  in  the  great  drama  of  human  affairs.  France, 
which  begins  the  century  with  the  despotic  Louis  the 
Fourteenth  at  its  head,  leaves  it  as  a  vigorous  Eepublic, 
with  Napoleon  Buonaparte  as  its  First  Consul.  The 
foundations  of  a  British  empire  were  laid  in  India, 
which  before  the  end  of  the  period  more  than  com- 
pensated for  the  loss  of  that  other  empire  in  the  "West, 
which  is  now  the  United  States  of  America.  It  was  the 
century  of  the  breaking  of  old  traditions,  and  of  the 
introduction  of  new  systems  in  life  and  government,-^ 
more  complete  in  its  transformations  than  the  splitting 
up  into  hitherto  unheard-of  nationalities  of  the  old 
Eoman  world  had  43een ;  for  what  Goth  and  Yandal, 
and  Frank  and  Lombard,  were  to  the  political  geo- 
graphy of  Europe  in  the  earlier  time,  new  modes  of 
thought,  both  religious  and  political,  were  to  the  moral 
constitution  of  that  later  date.  The  barbarous  inva- 
•iions  of  the  early  centuries  were  the  overflowing  of 
rivers  by  the  breaking  down  of  the  embankments ;  the 

491 


^^^2  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

revolutionary  "madness  of  France  was  the  sudden  de^ 
tacliment  of  an  avalanche  which  had  been  growing 
unobserved,  but  which  at  last  a  voice  or  a  footstep  was 
sufficient  to  set  in  motion.  In  all  nations  it  was  a  period 
of  doubt  and  uneasiness.  Something  was  about  to  happen, 
but  nobody  could  say  what.  The  political  sleight-of-hand 
men,  who  considered  the  safety  of  the  world  to  depend 
on  the  balance  of  power,  where  a  weight  must  be  cast 
into  one  scale,  exactly  sufficient,  and  not  more  than  suffi- 
cient, to  keep  the  other  in  equilibrio,  were  never  so  much 
puzzled  since  the  science  of  balancing  began.  A  vast 
country,  hitherto  omitted  from  their  calculations,  oi 
only  considered  as  a  make-weight  against  Sweden  oi 
Denmark,  suddenly  came  forward  to  be  a  check,  and 
sometimes  an  over-weight,  to  half  the  states  in  Europe. 
Something  had  therefore  to  be  found  to  be  a  counter- 
poise to  the  twenty  millions  of  men  and  illimitable 
dominions  of  the  Eussian  Czars.  This  was  close  at  the 
conjurer's  hand  in  Prussia  and  her  Austrian  neighbour. 
Counties  were  added, — populations  fitted  in, — Silesia 
given  to  the  one,  Gallicia  added  to  the  other;  and  at 
last  the  whole  of  Poland,  which  had  ceased  to  be  of  any 
importance  in  its  separate  existence,  was  cut  up  into 
such  portions  as  might  be  required,  with  here  a  frag- 
ment and  there  a  fragment,  till  the  scales  stood  pretty 
even,  and  the  three  contiguous  kingdoms  were  satisfied 
with  their  respective  shares  of  infamy  and  plunder.  If 
you  hear,  therefore,  of  robberies  upon  a  gigantic  scale, — 
no  longer  the  buccaneering  exploits  of  a  few  isolated 
adventurers  in  the  Western  seas,  but  of  kingdoms  deli- 
berately stolen,  or  imperiously  taken  hold  of  by  the  right 
of  the  strong  hand;  of  the  same  Titanic  magnitude 
distinguishing  almost  all  other  transactions;  colonies 
throwing  off  their  allegiance,  and  swelling  out  into 
hostile   empires,  instead   of  the  usual   discontent   and 


NATIONAL   DEBT. 


498 


occasional  quarrellings  between  the  mother-coimtry  and 
her  children;  of  whole  nations  breaking  forth  into 
anarchy,  instead  of  the  former  local  efforts  at  reforma- 
tion ending  in  temporary  civil  strife;  of  commercial 
ppeculations  reaching  the  sublime  of  swindling  and 
credulity,  and  involving  whole  populations  in  ruia;  and 
of  commercial  establishments,  on  the  other  hand,  vaster 
even  in  their  territorial  acquisitions  than  all  the  con- 
quests of  Alexander, — ^you  are  to  remember  that  these 
things  can  only  have  happened  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury ;  the  century  when  the  trammels  of  all  former 
experiences  were  thrown  off,  and  when  wealth,  power, 
energy,  and  mental  aspirations  were  pushed  to  an  unex- 
ampled excess.  This  exaggerated  action  of  the  age  is 
shown  in  the  one  great  statement  which  nearly  com 
prehends  all  the  rest.  The  Debt  of  this  country,  which 
at  the  beginning  of  this  century  was  sixteen  millions 
and  a  half  and  tormented  our  forefathers  with  fears  oi 
bankruptcy,  had  risen  at  the  end  of  it,  in  the  heroic 
madness  of  conquest  and  national  pride,  to  the  sum  of 
three  hundred  and  eighty  millions,  without  a  doubt  of 
our  perfect  competency  to  sustain  the  burden. 

If  the  tendency  of  affairs  on  the  other  side  of  our 
encircling  sea  was  to  pull  down,  to  destroy,  to  modify, 
and  to  redistribute,  the  tendency  at  home  was  to  build 
up  and  consolidate;  so  that  in  almost  exact  proportion 
to  the  wild  experiments  and  frantic  strugglings  of  other 
nations  after  something  new — new  principles  of  govern- 
ment, new  theories  of  society — there  arose  in  this 
country  a  dogged  spirit  of  resistance  to  all  alterations, 
and  a  persistence  in  old  paths  and  old  opinions.  The 
charms  which  constitution-mongers  saw  in  untried 
novelties  and  philosophic  systems  existed  for  John  Bull 
only  in  what  had  stood  the  wear  and  tear  of  hundreds 
of  years.     The   Prussians,  Austrians,  Americans,   and 


t94 


EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY. 


finally  the  French,  were  groping  after  vague  abstrao- 
tions;  and  Frederick  the  Soldier,  and  Joseph  the  Philan- 
thropist, and  Citizen  Franklin,  and  Lafayette  and  Mira- 
beau,  were  each  in  their  own  way  carried  away  with 
the  delusion  of  a  golden  age;  but  the  English  statesmen 
clung  -  rigidly  to  the  realities  of  life, — declared  the 
universal  fraternity  of  nations  to  be  a  cry  of  knaves  or 
hypocrites, — and  answered  all  exclamations  about  the 
dignity  of  humanity  and  the  sovereignty  of  the  people 
with  "Eule  Britannia,"  and  "God  save  the  King/' 
How  deeply  this  sentiment  of  loyalty  and  traditionary 
Toryism  is  seated  in  the  national  mind  is  proved  by 
nothing  so  much  as  by  the  dreadful  ordeal  it  had  to  go 
through  in  the  days  of  the  first  two  Georges.  It  cer- 
tainly was  a  faith  altogether  independent  of  external 
circumstances,  which  saw  the  divinity  that  hedges 
kings  in  such  vulgar,  gossiping,  and  undignified  indi- 
viduals. And  yet  through  all  the  troubled  years  of  their 
reigns  the  great  British  heart  beat  true  with  loyalty  to 
the  throne,  though  it  was  grieved  with  the  proceedings 
of  the  sovereigns ;  and  when  the  third  George  gave  it  a 
man  to  rally  round — as  truly  native-born  as  the  most 
indigenous  of  the  people,  as  stubborn,  as  strong-willed, 
and  as  determined  to  resist  innovation  as  the  most  con- 
sistent of  the  squires  and  most  anti-foreign  of  the  ciM 
zens — the  nation  attained  a  point  of  union  which  had 
never  been  known  in  all  their  jjrevious  history,  and 
looked  across  the  Channel,  at  the  insanity  of  the  per- 
plexed populations  and  the  threats  of  their  furious 
leaders,  with  a  growl  of  contempt  and  hatred  which 
warned  their  democrats  and  incendiaries  of  the  fate 
that  awaited  them  here.  There  are  times  in  all  national 
annals  when  the  nan'owest  prejudices  have  an  amazing 
resemblance  to  the  noblest  virtues.  When  Hannibal 
was  encamped  at  the  gates  of  Eome,  the  bigoted  0!** 


MILITARY   GLORY.  4^5 

Patricians  in  the  forum  carried  on  their  courts  of  h.w 
us  usual,  and  would  not  deduct  a  farthing  from  the  value 
of  the  lands  they  set  up  for  sale,  though  the  besieger 
was  encamped  upon  them.  When  a  king  of  Sicily 
offered  a  great  army  and  fleet  for  the  defence  of  Greece 
against  the  Persians,  the  Athenian  ambassador  said, 
"  Heaven  forefend  that  a  man  of  Athens  should  serve 
under  a  foreign  admiral!"  The  Lacedemonian  ambas- 
sador said  the  Spartans  would  put  him  to  death  if  he 
proposed  any  man  but  a  Spartan  to  command  their 
troops  J  and  those  very  prejudiced  and  narrow-minded 
patriots  were  reduced  to  the  necessity  of  exterminating 
the  invaders  by  themselves.  Great  Britain,  in  the  year 
1800,  was  also  of  opinion  that  she  was  equal  to  all  the 
world, — that  she  could  hold  her  own  whatever  powers 
might  be  gathered  against  her, — and  would  not  have 
exchanged  her  Hood,  and  Jervis,  and  Nelson,  for  the 
assistance  of  all  the  fleets  of  Europe. 

IN'othing  seems  to  die  out  so  rapidly  as  the  memory 
of  martial  achievements.  The  military  glory  of  this 
country  is  a  thing  of  fits  and  starts.  Cressy  and  Poic- 
tiers  left  us  at  a  pitch  of  reputation  which  you  might 
have  supposed  would  have  lasted  for  a  long  time.  But 
in  a  very  few  years  after  those  victories  the  English 
name  was  a  byword  of  reproach.  All  the  conquests 
of  the  Edwards  were  wrenched  away,  and  it  needed 
only  the  short  period  of  the  reign  of  Eichard  the 
Second  to  sink  the  recollection  of  the  imperturbable 
line  and  inevitable  shaft.  Henry  the  Fifth  and  Agin- 
20urt  for  a  moment  brought  the  previous  triumphs  into 
very  vivid  remembrance.  But  civil  dissensions  between 
York  and  Lancaster  blunted  the  English  sword  upon 
kindred  helmets,  and  peaceful  Henry  the  Seventh  loaded 
the  subject  with  intolerable  taxes,  and  his  son  wasted 
bis  treasures  in  feasts  and  tournaments.     The  long  reigns 


W6  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

of  Elizabeth  and  James  were  undistinguished  by  British 
armies  performing  any  separate  achievements  on  the 
Continent;  and  again  civil  war  lavished  on  domestic 
fields  an  amount  of  courage  and  conduct  which  would 
have  eclipsed  all  previous  actions  if  exhibited  on  a 
wider  scene.  We  need  not,  therefore,  be  surprised,  if, 
after  the  astonishing  course  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth's 
arms,  the  discomfiture  of  his  adversaries,  the  constant 
repulses  of  the  English  contingent  which  fought  under 
William  in  Flanders,  and  at  last  the  quiet,  looking  so 
like  exhaustion,  which  ushered  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury, the  British  forces  were  despised,  and  we  were  con- 
fessed, in  the  ludicrous  cant  which  at  intervals  becomes 
fashionable  still,  to  be  not  a  military  nation.  How  this 
astounding  proposition  agrees  with  the  fact  that  we 
have  met  in  battle  every  single  nation,  and  tribe,  and 
kindred,  and  tongue,  on  the  face  of  the  whole  earth,  in 
Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  and  America,  and  have  beaten 
them  all;  how  it  further  agrees  with  the  fact  that  no 
civilized  power  was  ever  engaged  in  such  constant  and 
multitudinous  wars,  so  that  there  is  no  month  or  week 
in  the  history  of  the  last  two  hundred  years  in  which  it 
can  be  said  we  were  not  interchanging  shot  or  sabre- 
stroke  somewhere  or  other  on  the  surface  of  the  globe  ,• 
how,  further  still,  the  statement  is  to  be  reconciled  with 
the  fact,  perceptible  to  all  mankind,  that  the  result  of 
these  engagements  is  an  unexampled  growth  of  influ- 
ence and  empire, — the  acquisition  of  kingdoms  defended 
by  millions  of  warriors  in  Hindostan,  of  colonies  ten 
times  the  extent  of  the  conqueror's  realm,  defended  by 
Montcalm  and  the  armies  of  France, — we  must  leave  to 
the  individuals  wh(5  make  it :  the  truth  being  that  the 
British  people  is  not  only  the  most  military  nation  the 
world  has  ever  seen,  not  excepting  the  Eoman,  but  the 
most  warlike.     It  is  impossible  to  say  when  these  pages 


SPANISH   SUCCESSION.  497 

may  meet  the  reader's  eye;  but,  at  whatever  time  it  may 
be,  he  has  only  to  look  at  the  "  Times"  newspaper  of  that 
morning,  and  he  will  see  that  either  in  the  East  or  the 
West,  in  China  or  the  Cape,  or  the  Persian  Gulf,  or  on 
the  Indus,  or  the  Irrawaddy,  the  meteor  flag  is  waved 
in  bloody  advance.  And  this  seems  an  indispensable 
part  of  the  British  position.  She  is  so  ludicrously 
small  upon  the  map,  and  so  absorbed  in  speculation,  eg 
padded  with  cotton,  and  so  sunk  in  coal-pits,  that  it  is 
only  constant  experience  of  her  prowess  that  keeps  the 
world  aware  of  her  power.  The  other  great  nations 
can  repose  upon  their  size,  and  their  armies  of  six  or 
seven  hundred  thousand  men.  Nobody  would  think 
France  or  Russia  weak  because  they  were  inactive. 
But  with  us  the  case  is  different :  we  must  fight  or  fall. 

Twice  in  the  century  we  are  now  engaged  on,  w€ 
rose  to  be  first  of  the  military  states  in  Europe,  and 
twice,  by  mere  inaction,  we  sank  to  the  rank  of  Portugal 
or  Naples. 

Charles  the  Second  of  Spain  died  in  November,  1700, — 
a  person  so  feeble  in  health  and  intellect  that  in  a  lower 
state  of  life  he  would  have  been  put  in  charge  of  guar- 
dians and  debarred  from  the  management  of  his  affairs. 
As  he  was  a  king,  these  duties  were  performed  on  his 
behalf  by  the  priests,  and  the  wretched  young  man — he 
succeeded  at  three  years  old — was  nothing  but  the  slave 
and  plaything  of  his  confessor.  Yet,  though  his  exist- 
ence was  of  no  importance,  his  decease  set  all  Europe 
in  turmoil.  By  his  testament,  obtained  from  him  on  his 
death-bed,  he  appointed  the  grandson  of  Louis  the 
Fourteenth  his  heir.  A  previous  will  had  nominated 
Charles  of  Austria.  A  previous  treaty  between  Louis 
and  William  of  England  and  the  States  of  Holland  had 
arranged  a  partition  of  the  Spanish  monarchy  for  the 
benefit  of  the  contracting  parties  and  tho  maintenance 


!'•>»  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

of  the  balance  of  power.  But  now,  when  a  choiv^e  was 
to  be  made  between  the  wills  and  the  treaty,  between 
the  balance  of  power  and  his  personal  ambition,  the 
temptation  was  too  great  for  the  cupidity  of  the  Grand 
Monarque.  He  accepted  the  throne  of  Spain  and  the 
Indies  for  his  grandson  Philip  of  Anjou,  and  sent  him 
over  the  Pyrenees  to  take  possession  of  his  dignity.  The 
stroke  was  so  sudden  that  people  were  silent  from  sur- 
prise. A  French  prince  at  Madrid,  at  Milan,  and  Naples, 
was  only  the  lieutenant  in  those  capitals  for  the  French 
king.  The  preponderance  of  the  house  of  Bourbon  was 
dangerous  to  the  liberties  of  Europe,  and  when  the 
house  of  Bourbon  was  represented  by  the  haughtiest, 
and  vainest,  and  most  insulting  of  men,  the  dignity  of 
the  remaining  sovereigns  was  offended  by  his  ostenta- 
tious superiority ;  and  the  house  of  Austria,  which  in 
the  previous  century  had  been  the  terror  of  statesmen 
and  princes,  was  turned  to  as  a  shelter  from  its  success- 
ful rival,  and  all  the  world  prepared  to  defend  the  cause 
of  the  Austrian  Charles.  The  affairs  of  Europe,  which 
were  disturbed  by  the  death  of  an  imbecile  king  in 
Spain,  were  further  complicated  by  the  death  of  a  still 
more  imbecile  king  at  St.  Germain's.  James  the  Second 
brought  his  strange  life  to  a  close  in  1701 ;  and,  though 
the  advisers  of  Louis  pointed  out  the  consequence  of 
offending  England  at  that  particular  time  by  recognising 
the  Prince  of  Wales  as  inheritor  of  the  English  crown, 
the  vanity  of  the  old  man  who  could  not  forego  the 
luxury  of  having  a  crowned  king  among  his  attendants 
prevailed  over  his  better  knowledge,  and  one  day,  to  the 
amazement  of  courtiers  and  council,  he  gave  the  royal 
reception  to  James  the  Third,  and  threw  down  the 
gauntlet  to  William  and  England,  which  they  were  not 
slow  to  take  up.  William  of  Orange  was  not  popular 
among  his  new  subjects,  and  was  always  looked  on  as  a 


MARLBOROUGH.  ^^^ 

foreigner.  Perhaps  the  memory  of  Euyter  and  \^an 
Tromp  was  still  fresh  enough  to  make  him  additionally 
disliked  because  he  was  a  Dutchman.  But  when  it  was 
known  over  the  country  that  the  bigoted  and  insulting 
despot  in  Paris  had  nominated  a  King  of  England,  while 
the  man  the  nation  had  chosen  was  still  alive  in  White- 
hall, the  indignation  of  all  classes  was  roused,  and  found 
its  expression  in  loyalty  and  attachment  to  their  de- 
liverer from  Popery  and  persecution.  Great  exertions 
were  made  to  conduct  the  war  on  a  scale  befitting  the 
importance  of  the  interests  at  stake.  Addresses  poured 
in,  with  declarations  of  devotion  to  the  throne ;  troops 
were  raised,  and  taxes  voted ;  and  in  the  midst  of  these 
preparations,  the  King,  prematurely  old,  in  the  fifty- 
third  year  of  his  age,  died  of  a  fall  from  his  horse  at 
Kensington,  in  March,  1702,  and  the  powers  of  Europe 
felt  that  the  best  soldier  they  possessed  was  lost  to  the 
cause.  Eather  it  was  a  fortunate  thing  for  the  confede- 
rated princes  that  William  died  at  this  time;  for  he  never 
rose  to  the  rank  of  a  first-rate  commander,  and  was  so 
ambitious  of  glory  and  power  that  he  would  not  have 
left  the  way  clear  for  a  greater  than  himself. 

This  was  found  in  Marlborough.  Military  science  was 
the  characteristic  of  this  illustrious  general;  and  no  one 
before  his  time  had  ever  possessed  in  an  equal  degree 
the  power  of  attaching  an  army  to  its  chief,  or  of  regu- 
lating his  strategic  movements  by  the  higher  considera- 
tion of  policy  and  statesmanship.  For  the  first  time,  in 
Engli&h  history  at  least,  a  march  was  equivalent  to  a 
battle.  A  change  of  his  camp,  or  even  a  temporary  re- 
treat, was  as  effectual  as  a  victory ;  and  it  was  seen  by 
the  clearer  observers  of  the  time  that  a  campaign  was 
a  game  of  skill,  and  not  of  the  mere  dash  and  intrepidity 
which  appeal  to  the  vulgar  passions  of  our  nature.  Not 
1^0,  however,  the  general  public :  their  idea  of  war  wai 


500  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

a  succession  of  hard  knocks,  with  enormous  lists  of  the 
killed  and  wounded.  A  manoeuvre,  without  a  charge 
of  bayonets  at  the  end  of  it,  was  little  better  than  cow 
ardice ;  and  complaints  were  loud  and  common  against 
the  inactivity  of  a  man  who,  by  dint  of  long-prepared 
combinations,  compelled  the  enemy  to  retreat  by  a  mei^ 
shift  of  position  and  cleared  the  Low  Countries  of  its 
invaders  without  requiring  to  strike  a  blow.  "Let  them 
see  how  we  can  fight,"  cried  all  the  corporations  in  the 
realm :  "  anybody  can  march  and  pitch  his  camp."  And 
it  is  not  impossible  that  the  foreign  populations  who  had 
never  seen  the  red-coats,  or,  at  most,  who  had  only 
known  them  acting  as  auxiliaries  to  the  Dutch  and 
often  compelled  to  retire  before  the  numbers  and  im- 
petuosity of  the  French,  had  no  expectation  of  success 
when  they  should  be  fairly  brought  opposite  their  former 
antagonists.  Friends  and  foes  alike  were  prepared  for 
a  renewal  of  the  days  of  Luxembourg  and  Turenne. 
In  this  they  were  not  disappointed;  for  a  pupil  of 
Turenne  renewed,  in  a  very  remarkable  manner,  the 
glories  of  his  master.  Marlborough  had  served  under 
that  great  commander,  and  profited  by  his  lessons.  He 
had  fifty  thousand  British  soldiers  under  his  undivided 
command;  and,  to  please  the  grumblers  at  home  and 
the  doubters  abroad,  he  made  the  reign  of  Anne  the 
most  glorious  in  the  English  military  annals  by  thick- 
coming  fights,  still  unforgotten,  though  dimmed  by  the 
exploits  of  the  more  illustrious  "Wellington.  The  first 
of  these  was  Blenheim,  against  the  French  and  Bava- 
rians, in  1704.  How  difi'erent  this  was  from  the  hand* 
to-hand  thrust  and  parry  of  ancient  times  is  shown  by 
the  fate  of  a  strong  body  of  French,  who  were  so  posted 
on  this  occasion  that  the  duke  saw  they  were  in  hia 
power  without  requiring  to  fire  a  gun.  He  sent  liis  aid- 
de-camp,  Lord  Orkney,  to  them  to  point  out  the  hope- 


PEACE   OF    UTRECHT.  ftC'J 

lessness  of  their  position;  and  when  he  rode  up,  ac- 
companied by  a  French  officer,  to  act.  perhaps,  as  hia 
interpreter,  a  shout  of  gratulation  broke  from  the  unsus- 
pecting Frenchmen.  "  Is  it  a  prisoner  you  have  brought 
us?"  they  asked  their  countryman.  "Alas!  no,"  ho 
replies :  "  Lord  Orkney  has  come  from  Marlborough  to 
tell  you  you  are  his  prisoners.  His  lordship  offers  you 
your  lives."  A  glance  at  the  contending  armies  con- 
firmed the  truth  of  this  appalling  communication,  and 
the  brigade  laid  down  its  arms.  The  tide  of  victory, 
once  begun,  knew  no  ebb  till  the  grandeur  of  Louis 
the  Fourteenth  was  overwhelmed.  Disgraces  followed 
quickly  one  upon  the  otber, — marshals  beaten,  towns 
taken,  conquests  lost,  his  wealth  exhausted,  his  people 
discontented,  and  the  bravest  of  his  generals  hopeless 
of  success.  Prince  Eugene  of  Savoy,  equal  to  Marl- 
borough in  military  genius,  was  more  embittered  against 
the  French  monarch,  to  whom  he  had  offered  his  ser- 
vices, and  who  had  had  the  folly  to  reject  them.  France, 
on  the  side  of  Germany  and  the  Low  Countries,  was 
pressed  upon  by  the  triumphant  invaders.  In  Spain, 
the  affairs  of  the  new  king  were  more  desperate  still. 
Gibraltar  was  taken  in  1704.  Lord  Peterborough,  a  wiser 
Quixote,  of  whose  victories  it  is  difficult  to  say  whether 
they  were  the  result  of  madness  or  skill,  marched 
through  the  kingdom  at  the  head  of  six  or  seven  thou* 
sand  English  and  conquered  wherever  he  went. 

When  the  war  had  lasted  eight  or  nine  years,  the 
reputation  of  Marlborough  and  the  British  arms  was  at 
its  height.  Our  fleets  were  masters  of  the  sea,  and  the 
Grand  Monarque  sent  humble  petitions  to  the  opposing 
powers  for  peace  upon  any  terms.  People  tell  us  that 
Marlborough  rejected  all  overtures  which  might  have 
deprived  him  of  the  immense  emoluments  he  received 
for  carrying  on  the  war.     Perhaps,  also,  he  was  inspired 


602 


EIGHTEENTH   CENTUKT. 


by  the  love  of  fame;  but,  whether  meanness  or  ambition 
was  his  motive,  his  warlike  propensities  were  finally 
1711  O'^^^come, — for  his  wife,  the  imperious  duchess, 
quarrelled  with  Queen  Anne, — the  ministry  was 
changed,  and  the  jealousies  of  Whitehall  interfered  with 
the  campaigns  in  Flanders.  Marlborough  was  displaced, 
and  a  peace  patched  up,  which,  under  the  name  of  the 
Peace  of  Utrecht,  is  quoted  as  showing  what 
small  fruits  British  diplomacy  sometimes  derives 
from  British  valour.  Louis  the  Fourteenth,  conquered 
at  all  points,  his  kingdom  exhausted,  and  all  his  reputa- 
tion gone,  saw  his  grandson  in  possession  of  the  crown 
which  had  been  the  original  cause  of  the  war,  and  Great 
Britain  rewarded  for  all  her  struggles  by  the  empty  glory 
of  filling  up  the  harbour  of  Dunkirk,  and  the  scarcely 
more  substantial  advantage,  as  many  considered  it  at 
the  time,  of  retaining  Gibraltar,  a  barren  rock,  and  Mi- 
norca, a  useless  island.  After  this,  we  find  a  long  period 
of  inaction  on  the  continent  produce  its  usual  effect. 
When  thirty  years  had  passed  without  the  foreign  popu- 
lations having  sight  of  the  British  grenadiers,  they  either 
forgot  their  existence  altogether,  or  had  persuaded  them- 
A.D.  1743.  selves  that  the  new  generation  had  greatly  de- 
A.D.  1745.  teriorated  from  the  old.  It  needed  the  victory  of 
Dettingen,  and  the  more  glorious  repulse  of  Fontenoy, 
to  recall  the  soldiers  of  Oudenarde  and  Malplaquet. 

In  the  interval,  amazing  things  had  been  going  on. 
Even  while  the  career  of  Marlborough  was  attended 
with  such  glory  in  arms,  a  peaceful  achievement  was 
accomplished  of  far  more  importance  than  all  his  victo- 
i'ies  An  Act  of  Union  between  the  two  peoples  who 
occupied  the  Isle  was  passed  by  both  their  Parliaments 
in  1707,  and  England  and  Scotland  disappeared  in  their 
separate  nationalities,  to  receive  the  more  dignified  ap 
pellation  of  the  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain.     This  was  a 


THE   PRETENDER. 


503 


Btatesman's  triumph;  for  the  popular  feeling  on  both 
sides  of  the  Tweed  was  against  it.  Scotland  considered 
herself  sold;  and  England  thought  she  was  cheated. 
Clauses  were  introduced  to  preserve,  as  far  as  possible, 
the  distinctions  which  each  thought  it  for  its  honour  to 
keep  up.  National  peculiarities  exaggerated  themselves 
to  prevent  the  chance  of  being  obliterated ;  and  Scotch- 
men were  never  so  Scotch,  nor  Englishmen  ever  S3 
English,  as  at  the  time  when  these  denomirations  were 
about  to  cease.  As  neighbours,  with  the  mere  tie  be- 
tween them  of  being  subjects  of  the  same  crown,  they 
were  on  amicable  and  respectful  terms  But  when  the 
alliance  was  proposed  to  be  more  intimate,  their  interests 
to  be  considered  identical  and  the  Parliaments  to  be 
merged  in  one,  both  parties  took  the  alarm.  "  The  pre- 
ponderating number  of  English  members  would  scarcely 
be  affected  by  the  miserable  forty-five  votes  reserved  for 
the  Scotch  representatives,"  said  Caledonia,  stern  and 
wild.  ^'  The  compact  phalanx  of  forty-five  determined 
Scotchmen  will  give  them  the  decision  of  every  question 
brought  before  Parliament,"  replied  England,  with  equal 
fear, — and  equal  misapprehension,  as  it  happily  turned 
out.  AVhen  eight  years  had  elapsed  after  this  great 
event  in  our  domestic  history,  with  just  sufficient  experi- 
ence of  the  new  machinery  to  find  out  some  of  its  defects, 
it  was  put  to  the  proof  by  an  incident  which  might  have 
been  fatal  to  a  far  longer  established  system  of  govern- 
ment. This  was  a  rebellion  in  favour  of  the  exiled 
Stuarts.  James  the  Third,  whom  we  saw  recognised  by 
Louis  the  Fourteenth  on  the  death  of  his  father  in  1701 
made  his  appearance  among  the  Highlanders  of  the 
North  in  1714,  and  summoned  them  to  support  liii 
family  claims. 

But  the  memory  of  his   ancestors  was  too  recent. 
Men  of  middle  age  remembered  James  the  Second  in 


604 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


bis  tyrannical  supremacy  at  Holyrood.  The  time  wag 
not  sufficiently  remote  for  romance  to  have  gathered 
round  the  harsh  reality  and  hidden  its  repulsive  out- 
lines. A  few  months  showed  the  Pretender  the  hope- 
lessness of  his  attempt;  and  the  tranquillity  of  the 
country  was  considered  to  be  re-established  when  the 
adherents  of  the  losing  cause  were  visited  with  the 
harshest  penalties.  The  real  result  of  these  vindictive 
punishments  was,  that  they  added  the  spirit  of  revenge 
for  private  wrong  to  the  spirit  of  loyalty  to  the  banished 
line.  Many  circumstances  concurred  to  favour  the  de- 
feated candidate,  who  seemed  to  require  to  do  nothing 
but  bide  his  time.  The  throne  was  no  longer  held,  even 
under  legalized  usurpation,  as  the  discontented  expressed 
it,  by  one  of  the  ancient  blood.  A  foreigner,  old  and 
stupid,  had  come  over  from  Hanover  and  claimed 
'  the  Parliamentary  crown,  and  the  few  remain- 
ing links  of  attachment  which  kept  the  high-prerogative 
men  and  tbe  Eoman  Catholics  inactive  in  the  reign  of 
Queen  Anne,  the  daughter  of  their  rightful  king,  lost  all 
their  power  over  them  on  the  advent  of  George  the 
First,  who  had  to  trace  up  through  mother  and  grand- 
mother till  he  struck  into  the  royal  pedigree  in  the  reign 
of  James  the  First.  It  was  thought  hard  that  descent 
from  that  champion  of  monarchic  authority  and  heredi- 
tary right  should  be  pleaded  as  a  title  to  a  crown  depend- 
ent on  the  popular  choice.  As  years  passed  on,  the 
number  of  the  discontented  was  of  course  increased. 
Whoever  considered  himself  neglected  by  the  intrusive 
government  turned  instinctively  to  the  rival  house.  A 
courtier  offended  by  the  brutal  manners  of  the  Hanover- 
ian rulers  looked  longingly  across  the  sea  to  the  descend- 
ant of  his  lineal  kings.  The  foreign  predilections,  and 
gtill  more  foreign  English,  of  the  coarse-minded  Georges, 
made  them  unpopular  with  the  weak  or  inconsiderate, 


SOUTH-SEA   BUBBLE.  501) 

who  did  liot  see  that  a  very  inelegant  pronunciation 
might  bo  united  with  a  true  regard  for  the  interests  of 
their  country. 

'J'he  commercial  passions  of  the  nations  succeeded  to 
the  military  enthusiasm  of  the  past  age,  and  brought 
their  usual  fruits  of  selfish  competition  and  social  degra- 
dation. Money  became  the  most  powerful  principle  of 
public  and  private  life :  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  a  man  of 
perfect  honesty  himself,  founded  his  ministry  on  the 
avowed  disbelief  of  personal  honesty  among  all  classes 
of  the  people;  and  there  were  many  things 
which  appeared  to  justify  his  incredulity.  There 
was  the  South-Sea  Bubble,  a  swindling  speculation,  to 
which  our  own  railway-mania  is  the  only  parallel,  where 
lords  and  ladies,  high  ecclesiastics  and  dignified  office- 
bearers, the  higliest  and  the  lowest,  rushed  into  the 
wildest  excesses  of  gambling  and  false  play,  and  which 
caused  a  greatei  loss  of  character  and  moral  integrity 
than  even  of  money  to  its  dupes  and  framers.  There 
was  the  acknowledged  system  of  rewarding  a  ministerial 
vote  with  notes  for  five  hundred  or  a  thousand  pounds. 
There  were  the  party  libels  of  the  time,  all  imputing  the 
greatest  iniquities  to  the  object  of  their  vituperation, 
and  left  uncontradicted  except  by  savage  proceedings 
at  law  or  by  similar  insinuations  against  the  other  side. 
There  were  philosophers  like  Bolingbroke  and  clergy- 
men like  Swift.  But  let  us  distinguish  between  the  per- 
formers on  the  great  scenes  of  life,  the  place  hunter  at 
St.  James's,  and  the  great  body  of  the  English  and  Scot- 
tish gentry,  and  their  still  undepraved  friends  and  neigh- 
bours, whom  it  is  the  fashion  to  involve  in  the  same  con- 
demnation of  recklessness  and  dishonour.  We  are  to 
remember  that  the  dregs  of  the  former  society  were  not 
yet  cleared  away.  The  generation  had  been  brought  up 
at  the  feet  of  the  professors  of  morality  and  religion  as 
22 

I 


^06  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

they  were  practised  in  the  days  of  Charles  and  James^ 
with  Congreve  and  Wycherly  for  their  exponents  on  the 
stage  and  Dryden  for  their  poet-laureate. 

It  seems  a  characteristic  of  literature  that  it  hecomes 
pure  in  proportion  as  it  becomes  powerful.  While  it  is 
the  mere  vehicle  for  amusement  or  the  exercise  of  wit 
and  fancy,  it  does  not  care  in  what  degrading  quarters 
its  materials  are  found.  But  when  it  feels  that  its  voice 
is  influential  and  its  lessons  attended  to  by  a  wider  audi- 
ence, it  rises  to  the  height  of  the  great  office  to  which  it 
is  called,  and  is  dignified  because  it  is  conscious  of  its 
authority.  In  the  incontestable  amendment  visible  in 
the  writings  of  the  period  of  Anne  and  the  Georges,  we 
find  a  proof  that  the  vices  of  the  busy  politicians  and 
gambling  speculators  were  not  shared  by  the  general 
public.  The  papers  of  the  Spectator  and  Tatler,  the 
writings  of  Pope  and  Arbuthnot,  were  not  addressed  to 
a  depraved  or  sensualized  people,  as  the  works  of  Eo- 
chester  and  Sedley  had  been.  When  we  talk,  therefore, 
of  the  Augustan  age  of  Anne,  we  are  to  remember  that 
its  freedom  from  grossness  and  immorality  is  still  more 
remarkable  than  its  advance  in  literary  merit,  and  we 
are  to  look  on  the  conduct  of  intriguing  directors  and 
bribed  members  of  Parliament  as  the  relics  of  a  time 
about  to  pass  away  and  to  give  place  to  truer  ideas  of 
commercial  honesty  and  public  duty.  The  country,  in 
Bpite  of  coarseness  of  manners  and  language,  was  still 
Bound  at  heart.  The  jolly  squire  swore  at  inconvenient 
seasons  and  drank  beyond  what  was  right,  but  he  kept 
open  house  to  friend  and  tenant,  administered  justice  to 
the  best  of  his  ability,  had  his  children  Christianly  and 
virtuously  brought  up,  and  was  a  connecting  link  in  his 
own  neighbourhood  between  the  great  nobles  who  afi*eeted 
almost  a  princely  state,  and  the  snug  merchant  in  Iho 
country  town,  or  retired  citizen  from  London,  whom  he 


THE   PRETENDER.  607 

met  at  the  weekly  club.  The  glimpses  we  get  of  the 
Bocial  Btatus  of  the  country  gentlemen  of  Queen  Anne 
make  us  enamoured  of  their  simple  ways  and  patriarchal 
position.  For  the  argument  to  be  drawn  from  the  cha- 
racter and  friends  of  Sir  Roger  de  Coverly  and  the  de- 
lightful Lady  Lizard  and  her  daughters,  is  that  the  great 
British  nation  was  still  the  home  of  the  domestic  affeo* 
lions,  that  the  behaviour  was  pure  though  the  grammar 
was  a  little  faulty,  and  the  ideas  modest  and  becoming 
though  the  expression  might  be  somewhat  unadorned. 
Hence  it  was  that,  when  the  trial  came,  the  heart  of  all 
the  people  turned  to  the  uninviting  but  honest  man  who 
filled  the  British  throne.  George  the  Second  became  a 
hero,  because  the  country  was  healthy  at  the  core. 

A  son  of  the  old  Pretender,  relying  on  the  lax  morality 
of  the  statesmen  and  the  venality  of  the  courtiers,  forgot 
the  unshaken  firmness  and  dogged  love  of  the  right 
which  was  yet  a  living  principle  among  the  populations 
of  both  the  nations,  and  landed  in  the  North  of  Scotland 
in  1745,  to  recover  the  kingdom  of  his  ancestors  by  force 
of  arms.  The  kingdoms,  however,  had  got  entirely  out 
of  the  habit  of  being  recovered  by  any  such  means.  The 
law  had  become  so  powerful,  and  was  so  guarded  by  forms 
and  precedents,  that  Prince  Charles  Edward  would  have 
had  a  better  chance  of  obtaining  his  object  by  an  action 
of  ejectment,  or  a  suit  of  recovery,  than  by  the  aid  of 
sword  and  bayonet.  Everybody  knows  the  main  inci- 
dents of  this  romantic  campaign, — the  successful  battles 
which  gave  the  insurgents  the  apparent  command  of  the 
Lowlands, — the  advance  into  England, — the  retreat  from 
Derby, — the  disasters  of  the  rebel  army,  and  its  final  ex- 
tinction at  Culloden.  But,  although  to  us  it  appears  is 
very  serious  state  of  affairs, — a  crown  placed  on  the  arbi- 
trament of  war,  battles  in  open  field,  surprise  on  the  part 
of  the  Hanoverians,  and  loud  talking  on  the  part  of  their 


b08 


EIGHTEENTH   CENTURT. 


rivals, — ^the  tranquillity  of  all  ranks  and  in  all  quarlei's 
is  the  most  inexplicable  thing  in  the  whole  proceeding. 
When  the  landing  was  first  announced,  alarm  was  of 
course  felt,  as  at  a  fair  when  it  is  reported  that  a  tiger 
has  broken  loose  from  the  menagerie.  But  in  a  little  time 
every  thing  resumed  its  ordinary  appearance.  George 
himself  cried,  "  Pooh  !  pooh !  Don't  talk  to  me  of  such 
nonsense."  His  ministers,  who  probably  knew  the  state 
of  public  feeling,  were  equally  unconcerned.  A  few 
troops  were  brought  over  from  the  Continent,  to  show 
that  force  was  not  wanting  if  the  application  of  it  was 
required.  But  in  other  respects  no  one  appeared  to  be- 
lieve that  the  assumed  fears  of  the  disaffected,  and  the 
no  less  assumed  exultation  of  the  Jacobites,  had  any 
foundation  in  fact.  Trade,  law,  buying  and  selling, 
writing  and  publishing,  went  on  exactly  as  before.  The 
march  of  the  Pretender  was  little  attended  to,  except 
perhaps  in  the  political  circles  in  London.  In  the  great 
towns  it  passed  almost  unheeded.  Quiet  families  within 
a  few  miles  of  the  invaders'  march  posted  or  walked 
across  to  see  the  uncouth  battalions  pass.  Their  strange 
appearance  furnished  subjects  of  conversation  for  a 
month ;  but  nowhere  does  there  seem  to  have  been  the 
terror  of  a  real  state  of  war, — the  anxious  waiting  for 
intelligence,  "  the  pang,  the  agony,  the  doubt :"  no  one 
felt  uneasy  as  to  the  result.  England  had  determined 
to  have  no  more  Stuart  kings,  and  Scotland  was  begin- 
ning to  feel  the  benefit  of  the  Union,  and  left  the  defence 
of  the  true  inheritor  to  the  uninformed,  discontented, 
disunited  inhabitants  of  the  hills.  When  the  tribes 
emerged  from  their  mountains,  they  seemed  to  melt  like 
their  winter  snows.  No  squadrons  of  stout-armed  cava- 
lit'.rs  came  to  join  them  from  holt  and  farm,  as  in  the 
days  of  the  Great  Eebellion,  when  the  royal  flag  was 
raised  at  Nottingham.    Puritans  and  Independents  took 


CULLODEN.  509 

no  heed,  and  cried  no  cries  about  "the  sword  of  the  Lord 
and  of  Gideon."  They  had  turned  cutlers  at  Sheffield 
and  fustian-makers  at  Manchester.  The  Prince  found 
not  only  that  he  created  no  enthusiasm,  but  no  alarm,— 
a  most  painful  thing  for  an  invading  chief;  and,  in  fact, 
when  they  had  reached  the  great  central  plains  of  Eng* 
land  they  felt  lost  in  the  immensity  of  the  solitude  that 
surrounded  them.  If  they  had  met  enemies  they  would 
have  fought ;  if  they  had  found  friends  they  would  have 
hoped;  but  they  positively  wasted  away  for  lack  of  either 
confederate  or  opponent.  The  expedition  disappeared 
like  a  small  river  in  sand.  What  was  the  use  of  going 
on  ?  If  they  reached  London  itself,  they  would  be  swal- 
lowed up  in  the  vastness  of  the  population,  and,  instead 
of  meeting  an  army,  they  would  be  in  danger  of  being 
taken  up  by  the  police.  So  they  reversed  their  steps. 
Donald  had  stolen  considerably  in  the  course  of  the  foray, 
and  wa^  anxious  to  go  and  invest  his  fortune  in  his  na- 
tive vale.  An  English  guinea — a  coin  hitherto  as  fabu- 
lous as  the  Bodach  glas — would  pay  the  rent  of  his  hold- 
ing for  twenty  years;  five  pounds  would  make  him  a 
cousin  of  the  Laird.  But  Donald  never  got  back  to  dis 
play  the  spoils  of  Carlisle  or  Derby.  He  loitered  by  the 
road,  and  was  stripped  of  all  his  booty.  He  was  im- 
prisoned, and  hanged,  and  starved,  and  beaten,  and 
finally,  after  the  strange  tragi-comedy  of  his 
*  tight  at  Falkirk,  had  the  good  fortune,  on  that 
Dare  expanse  of  Drummossie  Moor,  to  hide  some  of  the 
ludicrous  features  of  his  retreat  in  the  glory  of  a  war- 
rior's death.  Justice  became  revenge  by  its  severity 
after  the  insurrection  was  quelled.  The  followers  of  the 
Prince  were  punished  as  traitors;  but  treason  means 
rebellion  against  an  acknowledged  government,  which 
extends  to  its  subjects  the  securities  of  law.  These  did 
not  exist  in  the  Highlands.    All  those  distant  popula* 


510 


EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 


tions  knew  of  l<vw  was  the  edge  of  its  sword,  not  the 
balance  of  its  scales.  They  saw  their  chiefs  depressed, 
they  remembered  the  dismal  massacre  of  Glencoe  in 
William's  time,  and  the  legal  massacres  of  George  Iho 
First's.  They  spoke  another  language,  were  different  in 
blood,  and  manners,  and  religion,  and  should  have  been 
treated  as  prisoners  of  war  fighting  under  a  legal  banner, 
and  not  drawn  and  quartered  as  revolted  subjects.  It  is 
doubtful  if  one  man  in  the  hundred  knew  the  name  of 
the  king  he  was  trying  to  displace,  or  the  position  of  the 
prince  who  summoned  him  to  his  camp.  Poor,  gallant, 
warm-hearted,  ignorant,  trusting  Gael !  His  chieftain 
told  him  to  follow  and  slay  the  Saxons,  and  he  required 
no  further  instruction.  He  was  not  cruel  or  bloodthirsty 
in  his  strange  advance.  He  had  no  personal  enmity  to 
Scot  or  Englishman,  and,  with  the  simple  awe  of  child- 
hood, soon  looked  with  reverence  on  the  proofs  of  wealth 
and  skill  which  met  him  in  the  crowded  cities  and  culti- 
vated plains.  He  was  subdued  by  the  solemn  cathedrals 
and  grand  old  gentlemen's  seats  that  studded  all  the 
road,  as  some  of  his  ancestors,  the  ancient  Gauls,  had 
been  at  the  sight  of  the  Eoman  civilization.  And,  for  all 
these  causes,  the  incursion  of  the  Jacobites  left  no  last- 
ing bitterness  among  the  British  peoples.  Pity  began 
before  long  to  take  the  place  of  opposition ;  and  when 
all  was  quite  secure,  and  the  Highlanders  were  fairly 
subdued,  and  the  Pretender  himself  was  sunk  in  sloth 
and  drunkenness,  a  sort  of  morbid  sympathy  with  the 
gallant  adventurers  arose  among  thp  new  generation. 
Tender  and  romantic  ballads,  purporting  to  be  "La- 
ments  for  Charlie,"  and  declarations  of  attachment  to 
the  "  Young  Chevalier,"  were  composed  by  comfortable 
ladies  and  gentlemen,  and  sung  in  polished  drawing- 
rooms  in  Edinburgh  and  London  with  immense  applause 
Maoaulay's  "Lays  of  Ancient  Eome,"  or  Aytoun's  "Lays 


LITERATURE. 


611 


of  the  Scottish  Cavaliers/'  have  as  much  right  to  be 
called  the  contemporary  expression  of  the  sacrifice  of 
Virginia  or  the  burial  of  Dundee  as  the  Jacobite  songs 
to  be  the  living  voice  of  the  Forty-Five.  Who  was  there 
in  the  Forty-Five,  or  Forty-Six,  or  for  many  years  after 
that  date,  to  write  such  charming  verses  ?  The  High- 
landers themselves  knew  not  a  word  of  English;  the 
blue  bonnets  in  Scotland  were  not  addicted  to  the  graces 
of  poetry  and  music.  The  citizens  of  England  were  too 
busy,  the  gentlemen  of  England  too  little  concerned  in 
the  rising,  to  immortalize  the  landing  at  Kinloch-Moidart 
or  the  procession  to  Holyrood.  The  earliest  song  which 
commemorates  the  Pretender's  arrival,  or  laments  his 
fall,  was  not  written  within  twenty  years  of  his  attempt. 
By  that  time  George  the  Third  w^as  on  the  safest  throne 
in  Europe,  and  Great  Britain  was  mistress  of  the  trade 
of  India  and  the  illimitable  regions  of  America.  It  was 
easy  to  sing  about  having  our  "rightful  King,"  when 
we  were  in  undisputed  possession  of  the  Ganges  and  the 
Hudson  and  had  just  planted  the  British  colours  on 
Quebec  and  Montreal. 

This  rebellion  of  Forty-Five,  therefore,  is  remarkable 
as  a  feature  in  this  century,  not  for  the  greatness  of  the 
interest  it  excited,  but  for  the  small  effect  it  had  upon 
either  government  or  people.  It  showed  on  what  firm 
foundations  the  liberties  and  religion  of  the  nations 
rested,  that  the  appearance  of  armed  enemies  upon  our 
soil  never  shook  our  justly-balanced  state.  The  courts 
sat  at  Westminster,  and  the  bells  rang  for  church. 
People  read  Thomson's  "Seasons,"  and  wondered  at 
Garrick  in  "  Hamlet"  at  Drury  Lane. 

Meantime,  a  great  contest  was  going  on  abroad,  which, 
after  being  hushed  for  a  while  by  the  peace  of  1748,  broke 
Aj>.  1756  out  with  fiercer  vehemence  than  ever  in  what 

-1763.   is  called  the  Seven  Years'  War.     The  military 


512 


EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 


hero  of  this  period  was  Frederick  the  Second  of  Prussia, 
by  whose  genius  and  skill  the  kingdom  he  succeeded 
to — a  match  for  Saxony  or  Bavaria — rapidly  assumed 
its  position  as  a  first-rate  po\vei\  A  combination  of 
al'  the  old  despotisms  was  formed  against  him, — not, 
however,  without  cause;  for  a  more  unprincipled  re- 
mover of  his  neighbour's  landmarks,  and  despiser  of 
generosity  and  justice,  never  appeared  in  history.  J3ut 
when  he  was  pressed  on  one  side  by  Russia  and  Austria, 
and  on  the  other  by  France,  and  all  the  little  German 
potentates  were  on  the  watch  to  pounce  on  the  unpro- 
tected State  and  get  their  respective  shares  in  the  gene- 
ral pillage,  Frederick  placed  his  life  upon  the  cast,  and 
stood  the  hazard  of  the  die  in  many  tremendous  combats, 
crushed  the  belligerents  one  by  one,  made  forced  marches 
which  caught  them  unawares,  and,  though  often  defeated, 
conducted  his  retreats  so  that  they  yielded  him  all  the 
fruits  of  victory.  In  his  extremity  he  sought  and  found 
alliances  in  the  most  unlikely  quarters.  Though  a  self- 
willed  despot  in  his  own  domains,  he  won  the  earnest 
support  and  liberal  subsidies  of  the  freedom-lovini^  Eng- 
lish; and  though  a  philosopher  of  the  most  amazing 
powers  of  unbelief,  he  awakened  the  sympathy  of  all  the 
religious  Protestants  in  our  land.  All  his  faults  were 
forgiven — his  unchivalrous  treatment  of  the  heroic  King 
of  Hungary,  Ma'ria-Theresa,  the  Empress-Queen,  his  as- 
saults upon  her  territory,  and  general  faithlessness  and 
ambition — on  the  one  strong  ground  that  he  opposed 
Catholics  and  tyrants,  and,  though  irreligious  and  even 
scoffing  himself,  was  at  the  head  of  a  true-hearted  Pro- 
testant people. 

It  is  not  unlikely  the  instin^^ts  of  a  free  nation  led  us 
Bt  that  time  to  throw  our  moral  weight,  if  nothing  more, 
into  'the  scale  against  the  intrusion  of  a  new  and  untried 
power  which  began  to  take  part  in  the  conflicts  of  Eu* 


WILLIAM    PITT.  51« 

rope;  for  at  this  period  we  find  the  ill-omened  announce- 
ment that  the  Eussians  have  issued  from  their  deserts  a 
hundred  thousand  strong,  and  made  themselves  masters 
of  most  of  the  Prussian  provinces.  Though  defeated  in 
the  great  battle  of  Zorndorf,  they  never  lost  tho 
hope  of  renewing  the  march  they  had  made 
eleven  years  before,  when  thirty-five  thousand  of  them 
had  rested  on  the  Ehine.  But  Britain  was  not  blind 
either  to  the  past  or  future.  At  the  head  of  our  affairs 
was  a  man  whose  fame  continues  as  fresh  at  the  present 
hour  as  in  the  day  of  his  greatness.  William  Pitt  had 
been  a  cornet  of  horse,  and  even  in  his  j^outh  had  attracted 
the  admiration  and  hatred  of  old  Sir  Eobert  Walpole 
by  an  eloquence  and  a  character  which  the  world  has 
agreed  in  honouring  with  the  epithet  of  majestic ;  and 
when  war  was  again  perplexing  the  nations,  and  Britain, 
as  usual,  had  sunk  to  the  lowest  point  in  the  military 
estimate  of  the  Continent,  the  Great  Commoner,  as  he 
was  called,  took  the  government  into  his  hands,  and  the 
glories  of  the  noblest  periods  of  our  annals  were  imme- 
diately renewed  or  cast  into  the  shade.  Wherever  tho 
Great  Commoner  pointed  with  his  finger,  success  was 
certain.  His  fleets  swept  the  seas.  Howe  and  Hawko 
and  Boscawen  executed  his  plans.  In  the  East  he  was 
answered  by  the  congenial  energy  of  Clive,  and  in  tho 
West  by  the  heroic  bravery  of  Wolfe  For,  though  the 
war  in  which  we  were  now  engaged  had  commenced 
nominally  for  European  interests,  the  crash  of  arms  be- 
tween France  and  England  extended  to  all  quarters  of 
the  world.  In  India  and  America  equally  their  troops 
and  policies  were  opposed,  and,  in  fact,  the  battle  of  tho 
two  nations  was  fought  out  in  those  distant  realms. 
Our  triumph  at  Plassey  and  on  the  Heights  of  Abraham 
had  an  immense  reaction  on  both  the  peoples  at  home 
A.nd  a  very  cursory  glance  at  those  regions,  from  the 


^^4  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURT. 

middle  of  the  century,  will  be  a  fitting  iatroduclion  tc 
the  crowning  event  of  the  period  we  have  now  reachod, 
— namely,  the  French  Eevolution  of  1789.  The  rise  cf 
the  British  Empire  in  the  East,  no  less  than  the  loss  of 
our  dominion  in  the  West,  will  be  found  to  contribute  to 
that  grand  catastrophe,  of  which  the  results  for  good 
and  evil  will  be  felt  "to  the  last  syllable  of  recorded 
time." 

The  first  commercial  adventure  to  India  was  in  the 
bold  days  of  Elizabeth,  in  1591.  In  the  course  of  a 
hundred  years  from  that  time  various  companies  had 
been  established  by  royal  charter,  and  a  regular  trade 
had  sprung  up.  In  1702  all  previous  charters  were  con- 
solidated into  one,  and  the  East  India  Company  began 
its  career.  Its  beginning  was  very  quiet  and  humble. 
It  was  a  trader,  and  nothing  more  -,  but  when  it  saw  a 
convenient  harbour,  a  favourable  landing-place,  and  an 
industrious  population,  it  bent  as  lowly  as  any  Oriental 
slave  at  the  footstool  of  the  unsuspecting  Eajah,  and 
obtained  permission  to  build  a  storehouse,  to  widen  the 
wharf,  and,  finally,  to  erect  a  small  tower,  merely  for 
the  defence  of  its  property  from  the  langerous  inhabit- 
ants of  the  town.  The  storehouses  became  barracks, 
the  towers  became  citadels;  and  by  the  year  1750  the 
recognised  possessions  of  the  inoffensive  and  unambi- 
tious merchants  comprised  mighty  states,  and  were 
dotted  at  intervals  along  the  coast  from  Surat  and  Bom- 
bay on  the  west  to  Madras  and  Calcutta  on  the  east  and 
far  north.  The  French  also  had  not  been  idle,  and 
looked  out  ill  pleased,  from  their  domains  at  Pondi- 
cherry  and  Chandernagore,  on  the  widely-diffused  set- 
tlements and  stealthy  progress  of  their  silent  rivals. 
They  might  have  made  as  rapid  progress,  and  secured 
as  extensive  settlements,  if  they  had  imitated  their 
rivals'  stealthiness  and  silence.     But  power  is  nothing 


CLIVE.  615 

m  the  estimation  of  a  Frencliman  unless  he  can  Avear  it 
like  a  court  suit  and  display  it  to  all  the  world.  The 
governors,  therefore,  of  their  factories,  obtained  honours 
and  ornanients  from  the  native  princes.  One  went  so 
far  as  to  forge  a  gift  of  almost  regal  power  from  the 
Great  Mogul,  and  sat  on  a  musnud,  and  was  addressed 
with  prostration  by  his  countrymen  and  the  workmen 
\n  the  warerooms.  Wherever  the  British  wormed  their 
way,  the  French  put  obstacles  in  their  path.  Whether 
there  was  peace  between  Paris  and  London  or  not, 
made  no  difference  to  the  rival  companies  on  the  Coro- 
mandel  shore.  They  were  always  at  war,  and  only 
cloaked  their  national  hatred  under  the  guise  of  sup- 
porters of  opposite  pretenders  to  some  Indian  throne. 
Great  men  arose  on  both  sides.  The  climate  or  policies 
of  Hindostan,  which  weaken  the  native  inhabitant, 
only  call  forth  the  energies  and  manly  virtues  of  the 
intrusive  settler.  No  kingdom  has  such  a  bead-roll  of 
illustrious  names  as  the  British  occupation.  That  one 
century  of  "  work  and  will"  has  called  forth  more  self- 
reliant  heroism  and  statesmanlike  sagacity  than  any 
period  of  three  times  the  extent  since  the  Norman  Con- 
quest. From  Clive,  the  first  of  the  line,  to  the  Law- 
rences and  Havelocks  of  the  present  day,  there  has 
been  no  pause  in  the  patriotic  and  chivalrous  procession. 
Clive  came  just  at  the  proper  time.  A  born  general, 
though  sent  out  in  an  humble  mercantile  situation,  he 
retrieved  the  affairs  of  his  employers  and  laid  the  found 
ation  of  a  new  empire  for  the  British  crown.  Calcutta 
had  been  seized  by  a  native  ruler,  instigated  by  the 
French,  in  1756.  The  British  residents,  to  the  number 
of  one  hundred  and  forty-six,  were  packed  in  a  frightful 
dungeon  without  a  sufficiency  of  light  or  air,  and,  after 
a  night  which  transcends  all  nights  of  suffering  and 
despair,  when  the  prison-doors  were  thrown  open,  but 


516  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

twenty-two  of  the  whole  number  survived.  But  these 
were  twenty-two  living  witnesses  to  the  tp*anny  and 
cruelty  of  Surajah  Dowlat.  Clive  was  on  his  track  ere 
many  months  had  passed.  Calcutta  was  recovered, 
other  places  were  taken,  and  the  battle  of  Plassey 
fought.  In  this  unparalleled  exploit,  Clive,  with  threo 
thousand  soldiers,  principally  feepoyt^,  revenged  the 
Tictims  of  the  Black  Hole,  by  defeating  their  murderer 
at  the  head  of  sixty  thousand  men.  This  was  on  the 
23d  of  June,  1757;  and  when  in  that  f^ame  year  the 
news  of  the  great  European  war  between  the  nations 
came  thundering  up  the  Ganges,  the  victors  enlarged 
their  plans.  They  determined  to  expel  the  French 
from  all  their  possessions  in  the  East;  and  Admiral 
Pococke  and  Colonel  Coote  were  worthy  rivals  of  the 
gallant  Clive.  Great  fleets  encountered  in  the  Indian 
seas,  and  victory  was  always  with  the  British  flag. 
Battles  took  place  by  land,  and  uniformly  with  the 
same  result.  Closer  and  closer  the  invading  lines  con- 
verged upon  the  French;  and  at  last,  in  1761,  Pondi- 
cherry,  the  last  remaining  of  all  their  establishments, 
was  taken,  after  a  vigorous  defence,  and  the  French 
influence  was  at  an  end  in  India.  These  four  years, 
from  1757  to  1761,  had  been  scarcely  less  prolific  of 
distinguished  men  on  the  French  side  than  our  own 
The  last  known  of  these  was  Lally  Tollendal,  a  man  of 
a  furious  courage  and  headstrong  disposition,  against 
whom  his  enemies  at  home  had  no  ground  of  accusa- 
tion except  his  want  of  success  and  savageness  of  manner. 
Yet  when  he  returned,  after  the  loss  of  Pondicherry 
and  a  long  imprisonment  in  England,  he  was  attacked 
with  all  the  vehemence  of  personal  hatred.  He  was 
tried  for  betraying  the  interests  of  the  king,  tortured, 
and  executed.  The  prosecution  lasted  many  years,  and 
the  public  rage  seemed  rather  to  increase.    Long  after 


CONQUEST   OF   CANADA.  511 

peace  was  concluded  between   France    and  England, 
the  tragedy  of  the  French  expulsion  from  India 
*  received  its  final  scene  in  the  death  of  the  unfor- 
tunate Count  Lally. 

Quebec  and  its  dependencies,  during  the  same  glorious 
administration,  were  conquered  and  annexed  by  Wolfe; 
and  already  the  throes  of  the  great  Eevolution  were 
felt,  though  the  causes  remained  obscure.  Cut  off  from 
the  money-making  regions  of  Hindostan  and  the  patri- 
archal settlements  of  Canada,  the  Frenchman,  oppressed 
at  home,  had  no  outlet  either  for  his  ambition  or  dis- 
content. The  feeling  of  his  misery  was  further  aggra- 
vated by  the  sight  of  British  prosperity.  The  race  of 
men  called  Nabobs,  mercantile  adventurers  who  had 
gone  out  to  India  poor  and  came  back  loaded  with 
almost  incredible  wealth,  brought  the  ostentatious  habits 
of  their  Oriental  experience  with  them  to  Europe,  and 
offended  French  and  English  alike  by  the  tasteless  profu- 
sion of  their  expense.  Money  wrung  by  extortion  from 
native  princes  was  lavished  without  enjoyment  by  the  de- 
nationalized parvenu.  A  French  duke  found  himself  out- 
glittered  by  the  equipage  of  the  over-enriched  clove-dealer, 
— and  hated  him  for  his  presumption.  The  Frenchman 
of  lower  rank  must  have  looked  on  him  as  the  lucky  and 
dishonourable  rival  who  had  usurped  his  place,  and 
hated  him  for  the  opportunity  he  had  possessed  of  win- 
ning all  that  wealth.  Ground  to  the  earth  by  taxes  and 
toil,  without  a  chance  of  rising  in  the  social  scale  or  of 
escaping  from  the  ever-growing  burden  of  his  griefs, 
the  French  peasant  and  small  farmer  must  have  listened 
with  indignation  to  the  accounts  of  British  families  ^f 
their  own  rank  emerging  from  a  twenty  years'  resi- 
dence in  Madras  or  Calcutta  with  more  riches  than 
half  the  hereditary  nobles.  It  was  therefore  with  a 
feeling  of  unanimous  satisfaction  that  all  classes  of 


518 


EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 


Frenchmen  heard,  in  1773,  that  the  old  English  colonies 
in  America  were  filled  with  disaffection, — that  Boston 
had  risen  in  insurrection,  and  that  a  spirit  of  resistance 
to  the  mother-country  was  rife  in  all  the  provinces. 

The  quarrel  came  to  a  crisis  between  the  Crown  and 
the  colonies  within  fourteen  years  of  the  conquest  of 
Canada.  It  seemed  as  if  the  British  had  provided  them- 
selves with  a  new  territory  to  compensate  for  the  ap- 
proaching loss  of  the  old;  and  bitter  must  have  been 
the  reflection  of  the  French  when  they  perceived  that 
the  loyalty  of  that  recent  acquisition  remained  undis- 
turbed throughout  the  succeeding  troubles.  Taxation, 
the  root  of  all  strength  and  the  cause  of  all  weakness, 
had  been  pushed  to  excess,  not  in  the  amount  of  its 
exaction,  but  in  the  principle  of  its  imposition;  and  the 
British  blood  had  not  been  so  colonialized  as  to  submit 
to  what  struck  the  inhabitants  of  all  the  towns  as  an 
unjustifiable  exercise  of  power.  The  cry  at  first,  there- 
fore, was,  No  tax  without  representation;  but  the  cry 
waxed  louder  and  took  other  forms  of  expression.  The 
cry  was  despised,  whether  gentle  or  loud, — then  listened 
to, — then  resented.  The  passions  of  both  countries 
became  raised.  America  would  not  submit  to  dictation; 
Britain  would  not  be  silenced  by  threats.  Feelings 
which  would  have  found  vent  at  home  in  angry  speeches 
in  Parliament,  and  riots  at  a  new  election,  took  a  far 
more  serious  shape  when  existing  between  populations 
separated  indeed  by  a  wide  ocean,  but  identical  in  most 
of  their  qualities  and  aspirations.  The  king  has  been 
blamed.  "  George  the  Third  lost  us  the  colonies  by  his 
obstinacy :  he  would  not  yield  an  inch  of  his  royal 
dignity,  and  behold  the  United  States  our  rivals  and 
enemies, — perhaps  some  day  our  conquerors  and  op- 
pressors !"  Now,  we  should  remember  that  the  Great 
Britain  of  1774  was  a  very  narrow-minded,  self-opiniou' 


AMERICAN   REVOLUTION. 


519 


ated,  pig-headed  Great  Britain,  compared  to  the  cosmO' 
politan,  philanthropical,  and  altogether  disinterested 
Great  Britain  we  call  it  now.  If  the  king  had  bated 
his  breath  for  a  moment,  or  even  spoken  respectfully 
and  kindly  of  the  traitors  and  rebels  who  were  firing 
upon  his  flags,  he  would  have  been  the  most  unpopular 
man  in  his  dominions.  Many,  no  doubt,  held  aloof,  and 
found  excuses  for  the  colonists'  behaviour;  but  the  influ- 
ence of  those  meditative  spirits  was  small ;  their  voice 
was  drowned  in  the  chorus  of  indignation  at  what 
appeared  revolt  and  mutiny  more  than  resistance  to 
injustice.  And  when  other  elements  came  into  the 
question, — when  the  French  monarch,  ostensibly  at 
peace  with  Britain,  permitted  his  nobles  and  generals 
and  soldiers  to  volunteer  in  the  patriot  cause, — the  senti- 
ments of  this  nation  became  embittered  with  its  here- 
ditary dislike  to  its  ancient  foe.  "We  turned  them  out 
of  India :  were  they  going  to  turn  us  out  of  America  ? 
We  had  taken  Canada:  are  they  going  to  take  New 
York?  "We  might  have  offered  terms  to  our  own 
countrymen,  made  concessions,  granted  exemptions  from 
imperial  burdens,  or  even  a  share  in  imperial  legislation; 
but  with  Lafayette  haranguing  about  abstract  freedom, 
and  all  the  young  counts  and  marquises  of  his  expedi- 
A.D.  1778  tion  declaring  against  the  House  of  Lords,  the 
- 1780.  thing  was  impossible.  "War  was  declared  upon 
France,  and  upon  Spain,  and  upon  Holland.  "We  fought 
ever^^where,  and  lavished  blood  and  treasure  in  this 
great  quarrel.  And  yet  the  nation  had  gradually  ac- 
customed itself  to  the  new  view  of  American  wrongs. 
The  Ministry,  by  going  so  far  in  their  efforts  at  accom- 
modation, had  confessed  the  original  injustice  of  their 
cause.  So  we  fought  with  a  blunted  sword,  and  hailed 
even  our  victories  with  misgivings  as  to  our  right  to 
win  them.    But  it  was  the  season  of  vast  changes  in 


520 


EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY. 


the  political  distribution  of  all  the  world.  Prussia  was 
a  foremost  kingdom.  Eussia  was  a  European  Empire. 
India  had  risen  into  a  compact 'dominion  under  the 
shield  of  Britain.  Why  should  not  America  take  a 
substantive  piace  in  the  great  family  of  nations,  and 
play  a  part  hereafter  in  the  old  game  of  statesmen, 
called  the  Balance  of  Power?  In  1783  this  opinion 
prevailed.  France,  Spain,  and  Holland  sheathed  their 
Bwords.  The  Independence  of  the  United  States  was 
acknowledged  at  the  Peace  of  Versailles,  and  every- 
body believed  that  the  struggle  against  established 
governments  was  over. 

France  seemed  elevated  by  the  results  of  the  American 
War,  and  Great  Britain  humiliated.  Prophecies  were 
frequent  about  our  rapid  fall  and  final  extinction.  Our 
own  orators  were,  as  usual,  the  loudest  in  confessions 
of  our  powerlessness  and  decay.  Our  institutions  were 
held  up  to  dislike ;  and  if  you  had  believed  the  speeches 
and  pamphlets  of  discontented  patriots,  you  would  have 
thought  we  were  the  most  spiritless  and  down-trodden, 
the  most  unmerciful  and  dishonest,  nation  in  the  world. 
The  whole  land  was  in  a  fury  of  self-abasement  at  the 
degradation  brought  upon  our  name  and  standing  by  the 
treachery  and  iniquities  of  Warren  Hastings  in  India  j 
our  European  glory  was  crushed  by  the  surrender  at 
Paris.  It  must  be  satisfactory  to  all  lovers  of  their 
country  to  know  that  John  Bull  has  no  such  satisfac- 
tion as  in  proving  that  he  is  utterly  exhausted, — always 
deceived  by  his  friends,  alwaj^s  overreached  by  his  ene- 
mies, always  disappointed  in  his  aims.  In  this  self- 
depreciating  spirit  he  conducts  all  his  wars  and  all  his 
treaties;  yet  somehow  it  always  happens  that  he  gets 
what  he  wanted,  and  the  overreaching  and  deceiving 
antagonist  gives  it  up.  His  power  is  over  a  sixth  of  the 
human  race,  and  he  began  a  hundred  years  ago  with  a 


BRITISH    PROGRESS.  ^^1 

population  of  less  than  fourteen  millions;  and  all  the 
time  he  has  been  singing  the  most  doleful  ditties  of  the 
ill  success  that  always  attends  him, — of  his  ruinous  losses 
and  heart-breaking  disappointments.  The  men  at  the 
bead  of  att'airs  in  the  trying  years  from  the  Peace  of 
Versailles  to  1793  were  therefore  quite  right  not  to  bo 
taken  in  by  the  querulous  lamentations  of  the  nation. 
Wc  had  lost  three  millions  of  colonists,  and  gained  three 
juillion  independent  customers.  We  were  trading  to 
India,  and  building  up  and  putting  down  the  oldest 
dynasties  of  Hindostan.  Ships  and  commerce  increased 
in  a  remarkable  degree;  the  losses  of  the  war  w^ere  com- 
pensated by  the  gains  of  those  peaceful  pursuits  in  a 
very  few  years ;  and  we  were  contented  to  leave  to  Paris 
the  reputation  of  the  gayest  city  in  the  world,  and  to 
the  French  the  reputation  of  the  happiest  and  best-ruled 
people.  But  Paris  was  the  w'retchedest  of  towns,  and 
the  French  the  most  miserable  of  peoples.  When  any- 
body asks  us  in  future  what  was  the  cause  of  the  French 
Revolution,  w^e  need  not  waste  time  to  discuss  the 
writings  of  Voltaire,  or  the  unbelief  of  the  clergy,  or 
the  immorality  of  the  nobles.  We  must  answer  at  once 
by  naming  the  one  great  cause  by  which  all  revolutions 
are  produced, —  over-taxation.  The  French  peasant,  sigh- 
ing for  liberty,  had  no  higher  object  than  an  escape  from 
the  intolerable  burden  of  his  payments.  Ho  cared  no 
more  for  the  rights  of  man,  or  the  happiness  of  the 
human  race,  than  for  the  quarrels  of  Achilles  and  Aga- 
memnon. He  wanted  to  get  rid  of  the  "taille,"  the 
'*  corvee,"  and  twenty  other  imposts  which  robbed  him 
of  his  last  penny.  If  he  had  had  a  chicken  in  his  pot, 
and  could  do  as  he  liked  with  his  own  spade  and  pick- 
axe, he  never  would  have  troubled  his  head  about  codes 
and  constitutions.  But  life  had  become  a  burden  to  him. 
Bverybody  had  turned  against  him.     The  grand  old 


622  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

feudal  noble,  who  would  have  protected  and  cherished 
him  under  the  shadow  of  his  castle-wall,  was  a  lord- 
chamberlain  at  court.  The  kind  old  priest,  who  would 
bave  attended  to  his  wants  and  fed  him,  if  required,  at 
the  church-door,  was  dancing  attendance  in  the  ante- 
chamber of  a  great  lady  in  Paris,  or  singing  improper 
Bongs  at  a  jolly  supper-party  at  Yersailles.  There  were 
intendants  and  commissaries  visiting  his  wretched  hovel 
at  rapidly-decreasing  intervals  of  time,  to  collect  his 
contributions  to  the  revenue.  These  men  farmed  the 
taxes,  and  squeezed  out  the  last  farthing  like  a  Turkish 
pasha.  But  while  the  small  land-owner — and  they  were 
already  immensely  numerous — and  the  serf — for  he  was 
no  better — were  oppressed  by  these  exactions,  the  gentry 
^ere  exempt.  The  seigneur  visited  his  castle  for  a  month 
or  two  in  the  year,  but  it  was  to  embitter  the  country- 
man's lot  by  the  contrast.  His  property  had  many 
rights,  but  no  duties.  In  ancient  times  in  France,  and 
at  all  times  in  England,  those  two  qualities  went  together. 
Our  upper  classes  lived  among  their  tenants  and  depend- 
ants. They  had  no  alleviation  of  burdens  in  consequence 
of  their  wealth,  but  they  took  care  that  their  poorer 
neighbours  should  have  alleviation  in  consequence  of 
their  poverty.  Cottages  had  no  window-tax.  The  press- 
ure of  the  public  burdens  increased  with  the  power  to 
bear  them.  But  in  France  the  reverse  was  the  case. 
Poverty  paid  the  money,  and  wealth  and  luxury  spent 
it.  The  evil  was  too  deep-rooted  to  be  remedied  with- 
out pulling  up  the  tree.  The  wretched  millions  were 
starving,  toiling,  despairing,  and  the  thousands  were 
rioting  in  extravagance  and  show.  The  same  thing  oc 
curred  in  1789  as  had  occurred  in  the  last  glimmer  of 
the  Eoman  civilization  in  the  time  of  Clovis.  The 
Roman  Emperor  issued  edicts  for  the  collecticn  of  his 
revenue.      Commissioners   spread  over  the  land;   th« 


FRENCH   DISCONTENT. 


523 


miserable  Gaul  saw  the  last  sheaf  of  his  corn  torn  away, 
and  the  last  lamb  of  his  flock.  But  when  the  last  pro- 
perty of  the  poorest  was  taken  away,  the  imperial  cx- 
cliequer  could  not  remain  unfilled.  You  remember  the 
anhappy  men  called  Curials, — holders  of  small  estates 
in  the  vicinity  of  towns.  They  were  also  endowed  with 
rank,  and  appointed  to  office.  Their  office  was  to  make 
up  from  their  own  resources,  or  by  extra  severity  among 
their  neighbours,  for  any  deficiency  in  the  sum  assessed. 
Peasant,  land-owner,  curial, — all  sank  into  hopeless 
misery  by  the  crushing  of  this  gold-producing  ma- 
chinery. They  looked  across  the  Ehine  to  Clovis  and 
the  Franks,  and  hailed  the  ferocious  warriors  as  their 
deliverers  from  an  intolerable  woe.  They  could  not  bo 
worse  off  by  the  sword  of  the  stranger  than  by  the 
ledger  of  the  tax-collector.  In  1789  the  system  of  the 
old  Roman  extortion  was  revived.  The  village  or  dis- 
tric]^  was  made  a  curial,  and  became  responsible  in  its 
aggregate  character  for  the  individual  payments.  If  the 
number  of  payers  diminished,  the  increase  fell  upon  the 
few  who  were  not  yet  stripped.  The  Clovis  of  the  pre- 
sent day  who  was  to  do  away  with  their  oppressors, 
though  perhaps  to  immolate  themselves,  was  a  Revolu- 
tion,— a  levelling  of  all  distinctions,  ranks,  rights,  exemp- 
tions, privileges.  This  was  the  "liberty,  equality,  fra- 
ternity" that  were  to  overflow  the  worn-out  world  and 
fertilize  it  as  the  Nile  does  Egypt. 

Great  pity  has  naturally  been  expressed  for  the  no- 
bility (or  gentry)  and  clergy  of  France;  but,  properly 
considered,  France  had  at  that  time  neither  a  nobilily 
nor  a  clergy.  A  nobility  with  no  status  independent  of 
the  king — with  no  connection  with  its  estates  beyond 
the  reception  of  their  rents — with  no  weight  in  tlie 
legislature;  with  ridiculously  exaggerated  rank,  and 
ridiculously  contracted  influence;  with  no  interest  in 


524  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURT 

local  expenditure  or  voice  in  public  management;  a 
gentry,  in  short,  debarred  from  active  life,  excej  t  aa 
officers  of  the  army — shut  out  by  monarchic  jealousy 
from  interference  in  affairs,  and  by  the  pride  of  birth 
from  the  pursuits  of  commerce — is  not  a  gentry  at  all. 
A  clergy,  in  the  same  way,  is  a  priesthood  only  in  right 
of  its  belief  in  the  doctrines  it  professes  to  hold,  and  tho 
attention  it  bestows  on  its  parishioners.  Except  in  some 
few  instances,  the  Christianity  both  of  faith  and  practice 
had  disappeared  from  France.  It  was  time,  therefore, 
that  nobility  and  clergy  should  also  disappear.  The 
excesses  of  the  Eevolution  which  broke  out  in  1789,  and 
reached  their  climax  in  the  murder  of  the  king  in  1793, 
showed  the  excesses  of  the  misgovernment  of  former 
years.  If  there  had  been  one  redeeming  feature  of  the 
ancient  system,  it  would  have  produced  its  fruits  in  the 
milder  treatment  of  the  victims  of  the  reaction.  In  one 
or  two  provinces,  indeed,  we  are  told  that  hereditary 
attachment  still  bound  the  people  to  their  superiors,  and 
in  those  provinces,  the  philosophic  chronicler  of  the  fact 
informs  us,  the  centralizing  system  had  not  completed 
its  authority.  The  gentry  still  performed  some  of  the 
duties  of  their  station,  and  the  priests,  of  their  profes- 
sion. Everywhere  else  blind  hatred,  unreasoning  hope, 
and  bloody  revenge.  The  century,  which  began  with 
the  vainglorious  egotism  of  Louis  tho  Fourteenth  and 
the  war  of  the  Spanish  Succession, — which  progressed 
through  the  British  masterdom  of  India  and  the  self- 
sustaining  republicanism  of  America, — died  out  in  the 
convulsive  strugglings  of  thirty-one  millions  of  souls  on 
the  soil  of  France  to  breathe  a  purer  political  air  and 
shake  off  the  trammels  which  had  gradually  been  riveted 
upon  them  for  three  hundred  years.  Great  Britain  ha  J 
preceded  them  by  a  century,  and  has  ever  since  shewn 
the  bloodless  and  legal  origin  of  her  freedom  by  thi 


CLOSE   OF   THE   CENTURY.  ^^5 

bloodless  and  legal  use  she  has  made  of  it.  We  emerged 
from  the  darkness  of  1688  with  all  the  great  landmarks 
of  our  country  not  only  erect,  but  strengthened.  We 
had  king,  lords,  and  commons,  and  a  respect  for  law, 
and  veneration  for  precedents,  which  led  the  great  Duke 
of  Wellington  to  say,  in  answer  to  some  question  about 
the  chance  of  a  British  revolution,  that  "  no  man  could 
foiesee  whether  such  a  thing  might  occur  or  not,  but, 
when  it  did,  he  was  sure  it  would  he  done  by  Act  of 
Parliament." 

War  with  France  began  in  1793.  Our  military  repu- 
tation was  at  the  lowest,  for  Wolfe  and  Clive  had  had 
time  to  be  forgotten ;  and  even  our  navy  was  looked  on 
without  dismay,  for  the  laurels  of  Howe  and  Boscawen 
were  sere  from  age.  But  in  the  remaining  years  of  the 
century  great  things  were  done,  and  Britannia  had  the 
trident  firmly  in  her  hand.  Jervis,  and  Duncan,  and 
Nelson,  were  answering  with  victories  at  sea  the 
triumphs  of  Napoleon  in  Italy.  And  while  fame  was 
blowing  the  names  of  those  champions  far  and  wide,  a 
blast  came  across  also  from  India,  where  Wellesley  had 
begun  his  wondrous  career.  Equally  matched  the  bel- 
ligerents, and  equally  favoured  with  mighty  men  of 
valour  to  conduct  their  forces,  the  feverish  energy  of 
#he  newly-emancipated  France  being  met  by  the  health- 
ful vigour  of  the  matured  and  self-respecting 
Britain,  the  world  was  uncertain  how  the  great 
drama  would  close.  But  the  last  year  of  the  century 
seemed  to  incline  the  scale  to  the  British,  side.  Na- 
poleon, after  a  dash  at  Egypt,  had  been  checked 
by  the  guns  of  Nelson  in  the  great  battle  of  the 
Nile.  He  secretly  withdrew  from  his  dispirited  army, 
and  made  his  appearance  in  Paris  as  much  in  the  cha- 
racter of  a  fugitive  as  of  a  candidate  for  power.  But  all 
the  fruits  of  his  former  battles  had  been  torn  from  his 


526 


EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 


couutrymen  in  his  absence.  Italy  was  delivered  from 
their  grasp;  Eussia  was  pouring  her  hordes  into  the 
South;  confusion  was  reigning  everywhere,  and  the 
fleets  of  Great  Britain  were  blocking  up  every  harbour 
in  France. 

Napoleon  was  created  First  Consul,  and  the  Century 
went  down  upon  the  final  preparations  of  the  embittered 
rivals.  Both  parties  felt  now  that  the  struggle  was  for 
life  or  death,  and  "the  boldest  held  his  breath  for  a 
time,"  when  he  thought  of  what  awful  events  the  Kino 
teectb  Century  would  be  the  scene. 


INDEX. 


AroEUiALEf ,  the  calijh,  167. 

A-Beckett,  the  ele vatic n  and   career  of, 

2S0etsen. 
Abelard,  rise  of  free  inqniry  with,  280. 
Aboo  Beker,  the  exploits,  &c.  of,  157,  158 

— chosen  Mohammed's  successor,  160 — 

his  exploits,  Itil. 
Absolutism,  rise  of,  in  France  under  Louis 

XIV.,  475  et  seq. 
Abu  Taleb,  urn  le  of  Mohammed,  138. 
Academies,  establishment  of,  by  Charle- 
magne, 190. 
Adrian,  the  emperor,  accession  and  reign 

of,  45  et  seq. — bis  death,  48. 
Adrian  IV.,  Pope,  2.S9. 
Africa,  progress  of  the  Sftracens  in,  166 — 

tradiD'^-company  to,  452. 
Agincourt.  battle  of,  381. 
At:ricultuie,  state  o^  in  seyenth  century, 

142. 
Ap:rippina,  the  empress,  22. 
Alans,  the,  100. 
Alaric  the  Goth,  first  appearance  of,  98 — 

hostilities  witlj,  101— sack  of  Rome,  106 

— his  death  and  burial.  107. 
Albi^enses,  tenets,  Ac.  of  the,  299 — the  cra- 

sade  a;;ainst  them,  302  et  seq. 
Albinus.  a  candidate  for  the  empire,  60. 
Alboin,  King  of  the  Lombards,  129. 
Alcuin  at  the  court  of  Charlemagne,  194 — 

as  Abbot  of  Tours,  195. 
Aleppo  taken  by  the  Saracens,  163. 
Alexander  VI.,  character,  &c.  of,  369,  406. 
Alexandri.1,  tho  monks  of,  115— taken  by 

the  Saracens,  and  destruction  of  the 

librai-y,  163. 
Alexis,    the  emperor,  and  the  Crusaders, 

263. 
.Alfred,  rise  and  exploi(s  of,  215. 
A.li  becomes  caliph,  167 — the  exploits,  Ac. 

of,  157,  158,  160. 
Alva,  the  Duke  of,  the  St.  Bartholomew 

massacre  planned  with,  441 — his  cruel- 
ties in  the  Netherlands,  441. 
*m«dl8  1»  GauU  the  romance  of,  349. 


America,  the  discovery  of,  896  — groulug 

importance  o)  its   ULouvery,  402 — ^pro 

gresa  of  British  ijjwer  in,  517. 
Amru,  the  Saraucn  conqxieror,  163. 
Anagni,  the  an-est  of  Boniface  VIlL  at, 

329. 
Anglican  Church,  the,  under  Henry  II., 

2.S9  et  seq. 
An2k)-.Saxons,  establishment  of  the,  120. 
Annf,  the  literature  of  the  reign  of,  506. 
Ansehn,  learning,  Ac.  of,  247. 
Antharis,  conquest  of  Italy  by,  130. 
Antioch,  the  capture  of,  by  the  Crusaders, 

2(34— the  battle  of,  265. 
Antoninus  Pius,  the  emperor,  his  character 

and  reign,  49. 
Aquileia,  siege  of,  by  Maximin,  70— taken 

by  Attila,  110. 
Aquitaine,  power  of  the  Dukes  of,  204,  232. 
Arcadius,  the  emperor,  101. 
Architecture,  advancement  of,  during  the 

eleventh  century,  242,  243. 
Argentine,  Sir  (Jiles  d',  death  of,  353. 
Ariaus.  enmity  between,  and  the  orthodox, 

94 — quairels  between,  and  the  Athana- 

siuns,  117. 
Aristocracy,  the  Roman,  their  decay,  32  d 

seq. 
Aristotle,  supremacy  given  to,  297. 
Armagnac,  the  Count  of,  364 — struggle  be 

tween,  and  Burgundy,  377. 
Armies,  the  modern,  of  Kurope,  57. 
Arnold  of  Brescia,  the  revolt  of,  278— hL" 

death,  279. 
Arteveldt,  James  Van,  355. 
Asia,  stationary  condition  of,  14. 
Asti,  siege  of,  by  Alaric,  105. 
Ataulf  the  Goth,  career  of,  108. 
Athanasians.  division  between  the,  and  t>  e 

Arians,  117. 
Attila  the  Ilun,  cnreer  of,  109  et  seq. 
Augustin,  influence  of,  on  Luther,  424. 
Augustus,  the  supremacy  of,  17 — bin  refgli. 

18. 
Aulus  Plantius,  landing  of,  in  Eu^land,  23 


528 


INDEX. 


Aurelian,  the  emperor,  72 — ^his  triumph, 

79. 
Austrasia,  kingdom  of,  155. 
Au-stiia,  the  power  of,  in  the  seventeenth 

cen  ury,  463 — the  seven  years'  war,  512. 
Auvergne,  the  Marquises  of,  205. 
Avars,  junction  of  the  Lombards  with  the, 

V2ii. 
Avignon,  acquired  by  the  Pope,  306 — the 

refsidence  of  the  Popes  at,  342. 
Azores,  discovery  of  the,  395. 

Bacon,  Roger,  gunpowder  known  to,  372. 
Badby,  Jolin,  martyrdom  of,  367. 
baliuchet,  a  French  admiral.  355. 
Balbinus,  appointment  of,  69 — Ids  death, 

70. 
Baldwvn,  Count  of  Flanders,  26S— habits 

of,  in  the  Kast.  270. 
Baliol.  maintained  by  Edward  I.,  319. 
Ballads,  influence  of,  on  the  common  peo- 
ple. 372. 
Bannockburn,  the  battle  of,  352. 
Barbarians,  first  appearance  of  the,  25 — 

their  increased  incursions,  51 — their  con- 
tinued   progress,    71 — their    increasing 

strength,  79  et  seq. 
Barb  ivara.  a  Genoese  admiral,  355. 
Burcho-chebas,  the  rebellion  of  the  Jews 

under.  47. 
Bedford,  the  Duke  of,  in  France,  384. 
Belisarius,  exploits  of,  124 — disgraced,  125. 
Bells,  the  invention  of,  196. 
Benedict.    JSee  St.  Benedict. 
Benedict  XI.  poiRf)ned.  331. 
Benedictine  monks,  industry,  &c.  of  the, 

142. 
Berenger,  transubstantiation  assailed  by, 

247. 
Bernird  de  Goth,  elevated  to  the  papacy 

as  Clement  V.,  331  et  serj. 
Beziers.  massacre  of  Albigenses  in,  305. 
Bible.  Wickliff's  tiansla.ion  of  the,  342— 

the  tirst   book  printed  by  Guttenberg, 

422. 
Bishops,  increasing  alarm  of  the,  in  the 

ninth    centnry,    2ii5 — warlike,    of    the 

eleventh  century,  251. 
Black  Hole  of  Calcutta,  the  tragedy  of  the, 

515. 
Blanche,  mother  of  Louis  IX.,  urges  the 

persecutiin  of  the  Albi^^enses,  304. 
Blenheim,  the  biittle  of,  500. 
Bixcaccio,  the  works  of,  344. 
Bohemund,  the  Crusader,  265. 
Boniface  VII.,  Pope,  2:36. 
Bonitiace  VIII.,  bull  against  Edward  I.  by. 

315 — jubilee  celebrated  by,  325 — contest 

vith  Phiiip  le  Bel,  32G  ct  seq. — his  arrest. 

329  ct  scq.—h\3  death,  330. 
Boiiifaie,  Archbishop  of  Mayence,  175. 
Books,  early  value  of,  372 — multiplied  by 

printing;,  373. 
Borgi.i.  elevation  of,  to  the  Papacy,  369. 
Biantome,  the  memoirs  of,  447. 
Biiliery,  prevalence  of  under  Walpole,  505. 
Brittany,  power  of  the  Dukes  of,  204 — ac- 

Quired  by  RoUo  the  Norman,  226. 


Bruce,  the  victory  of,  at  Bannockburn,  352. 

Bruges,  defeat  of  the  townsmen  ot;  at  Caa- 
sel,  353. 

Brunehild,  cruelties  and  career  of,  150— 
her  death,  150. 

Brunissende  de  Perigord,  mistress  of  Cle- 
ment v.,  332. 

Buccaneers,  rise  of  the,  452. 

Burghers,  increasiui^  importance  of  the 
279 

Burgundians,  conquest  of  Gaul  by  the,  108. 

Burgundy,  kinndom  of,  155. 

Buseniiuo,  burial  of  Aiaric  in  the,  107. 

Cade,  the  insurrection  of,  374. 

Cadijah,  wife  of  Mohammed,  138. 

Calais,  taken  by  Edward  III.,  356. 

Caligula,  the  character,  &c,  of,  19. 

Caliphs,  habits  ot  the,  165. 

Calvinists  and  Lutherans,  hatred  between. 

4t0. 
Cambrai,  the  league  of  409  et  uq. 
Canada,  the  conqnestof,  by  the  British,  617. 
Cannon,  first  einpb  ynieut  of,  342. 
Capetian  line,  commencement  of  the,  231. 
Caracal  la,  character  of,  62 — his  accession 

and  reign,  t6. 
Carausiuf,  the  revolt  of,  75. 
Carlovingian  line,  close  of  the,  231. 
Carthage,  sul  dued  by  the  Saracens,  166. 
Ca.'Sel,  the  battle  of,  353. 
Cas.sius.  the  rebellion  of  52. 
Cathedrals,  bnilding  oi,  during  the  eleventh 

century,  242. 
Catherine  do  Medicis,  the  massacre  of  St. 

Bartholomew  planned  by,  4il. 
Catholicism,   resemblances    between,  and 

Mohammedanism,  271. 
Cavendish,  the  naval  exploits  of,  451. 
Caxtcn,  books  printed  by,  393. 
Celibacy,  priestly,  neglect  of,  during  the 

eleveiath  century,  252 — enforced  by  Ilil- 

debrand,  256. 
Centuries,  characters  of  different,  13, 15,  ct 

seq. 
Chaereas,  assassination  of  Caligula  by,  20 
Ch;tlons,  the  battle  of,  110. 
Change,  prevalence  of,  during  eighteenth 

century,  491. 
Charlemagne,  accession  and  reign  of,  186 

etaeq. — ^liis  conquests,  187 — crowned  Em- 
peror of  the  West,  188— his  era,  188  et  seq. 

—his   polity,   «S:c.,   189 — his  court,   &c,., 

193,  194  et  seq. — his  encouragement  of 

literature,    &c.,  195   et  se/j.—his   death, 

and  disruption  of  his  empire,  198,  201  et 

seq. 
Charles,  son  of  Louis  the  Debonnaire,  2ol 

— char.icter  and  reign  of  206. 
Charles  the  i^imple  audUollo  the  Noi-man, 

2i5,  226,  227. 
Charles  VI..  decline  of  the  French  nobility 

under,  360  et  se7.— death  of  384. 
Charles  VII.,  accession  of,  384— the  Maid 

of  Orleans,  386  ct  seq. — his  desertion  of 

her.  389. 
Charles  IX.,  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholo 

mew,  442. 


INDEX. 


629 


Charles  V .,  the  emperor,  extent  of  his  do- 
minions, 404 — and  Luther,  427 — close  of 
his  career,  431,  432. 

Charles  I.,  unpopularity  of,  465 — the  exe- 
cution of,  470. 

Charles  II.,  England  under,  472  et  seq. 

Charles  11.  of  Spain,  death  of,  and  his  will, 
497. 

Charles  Edward,  the  rising  under,  507. 

Charles  Martel,  the  defeat  of  the  Saracens 
by,  176,  179,  et  seq. 

Chatham,  the  ministry  of,  513. 

Chaucer,  the  works  of,  344. 

Chiideric  III.,  the  last  of  the  Merovingians, 
182 

Chivalry,  rise  of  the  orders  of,  344 — prin- 
ciples inculcated  by,  349. 

Cliosroes,  King  cf  Persia,  158. 

Christ,  the  bir»V>  of  and  its  influence,  17. 

Christian  Church,  progre8si\  e  development 
of  the,  76 — its  organization,  78 — corrup- 
tion of  the,  114 — divisions  in  it,  116 — 
persecutions,  118. 

Christians,  persecution  of  the,  by  Nero,  23 
— policy  of  Adrian  towards,  4U. 

Christianity,  influence  of,  17 — the  first 
effects  o£  36— progress  of,  55 — establish- 
ment ot  by  Constantine,  8o — commenc- 
ing struggle  of^  with  Mohammedanism, 

Church,  the  privileges  conferred  on,  and 
its  advantages,  145 — corruptions.  147, 
148 — at  variance  with  the  nobility,  153 — 
its  unity,  155— state  of,  in  England  dur- 
ing eighth  century,  172,  173 — monarchi- 
cal principle  established  in  the,  183— 
effects  of  the  Crusades  on,  273 — increas- 
tog  pretensions  and  power  of,  206,  207 — 
posHessions,  Ac.  of,  in  France  in  the  tenth 
century,  228 — resistance  to  it.  "230 — policy 
of  Hugh  Capet,  231 — sUite  of,  during  the 
tenth  century,  219 — during  the  eleventh 
century,  253— in  England  under  Henry 
II.,  292  et  seq. — conditions  of  Majrna 
Charta regarding,  30S— cljanged  position 
of,  342 — state  of,  in  the  fifteenth  century. 
308  et  seq. — before  the  Reformation,  419 
etseq. 

Church  of  England,  the,  and  its  influence 
and  tendencies,  457. 

Churches,  schism  between  the  Eastern  and 
Western,  133 — rebuilding,  &c.  of  the,  in 
the  eleventh  century,  242 — their  objects, 
&c.,  244  et  seq. 

Churchmen,  warlike,  during  the  eleventh 
century,  251. 

Citeaux,  the  Abbot  of,  305. 

Claudius,  reign  and  character  of,  20 — his 
death,  22. 

Clement  V.,  election  of,  331,  332— his  ra- 
pacity, &c,  332— the  persecution  of  the 
Templars,  337  et  seq. 

Clergy,  the,  privileges  conferred  on,  145 — 
corruption  of  the  higher,  148 — increasing 
claims  of,  in  the  ninth  century,  204  el 
•C7.— claims  of.  in  the  tenth  century,  and 
resistance  toTJjcia,  2fli — iioJiry  frf  ilu£(li 
Capet,   232—  the  higher    character  of, 

23 


during  the  twelfth  century,  274 — charac- 
ter of,  in  Provence,  300 — taxed  in  Eng- 
land by  Edwiird  1.,  315 — support  Henry 
IV.  in  England,  365— the  French  at  the 
time  of  the  Revolution,  523. 

Clive,  the  exploits  of,  515. 

Clotaire,    overthrow  of  Brunehild  by,  150. 

Clothilde,  anecdote  of,  153. 

Clovis,  accession  of,  in  France,  119 — th« 
descendants  of,  175 — set  aside,  182. 

Cobham,  Lord,  martyrdom  of,  307. 

Colonies,  the  first  English  and  Dutch,  454. 

Colonna,  the  arrest  of  Boniface  VIII.  by, 
329. 

Columbus,  the  career  of,  and  his  discovery 
of  America,  395. 

Commerce,  progress  of,  in  England  under 
Elizabeth,  449  et  seq. 

Com  modus,  accession  and  character  of,  58 
et  seq. 

Commons,  rise  of  the,  in  England,  306 — 
House  of,  first  constituted  iu  England, 
311. 

Cond6,  the  Great,  478,  481. 

Conrad,  the  emperor,  heads  the  second 
Crusade,  284. 

Conservatism,  strength  of,  in  England  dur- 
ing eighteenth  century,  494. 

Constantine.  accession  of,  and  removal  to 
Constantinople,  84— his  character,  85— 
establishes  Christianity,  85 — his  system 
of  government,  86 — nobility  founded  by 
him,  87— his  system  of  fixation,  89 — 
death,  92. 

Constantinople,  removal  of  the  seat  of  em- 
pire to,  84— subordination  of  the  Bishop 
of,  125-— supremacy  claimed  for  the  Bi- 
shop of,  132,  133 — assailed  by  the  Sara- 
cens, 166 — early  subordination  of  the 
Popes  to,  174 — pretensions  of  the  em- 
perors, 176,  177— the  Crusaders  at,  262, 
203 — difi'usion  of  learning  by  capture  o£i 
422. 

Convents,  state  of  the,  during  the  tenth 
century,  221. 

Coote,  Sir  Eyre,  516. 

Cornelius  and  Novatian,  the  schism  bo- 
tween,  78. 

Council  of  Toledo,  the,  151. 

Count,  origin  of  the  title  of,  88. 

Courtrai,  the  battle  of,  335. 

Covenanters,  persecutions  of  the,  in  Scot- 
land, 473. 

Crecy,  battle  of,  356. 

Cromwell,  the  rise  &c.  of,  470 — England 
under,  471. 

Crown,  position  of  the,  in  England  and 
Franco  during  the  tenth  century,  230 — 
new  position  given  to  the,  under  Hugh 
Capet,  233  et  seq. — its  increasing  power, 
359  et  seq. 

Crusades,  urst  suggestion  of  the,  242 — the 
first,  260  et  seq. — losses  in  it,  and  its 
effects  on  Europe,  269 — of  children,  269 
—the  second,  284— the  tiiird,  285~lnflu. 
ence  of,  on  the  distribution  of  wnaltl;, 
Ac,  272— end  o^  316. 

OraaalfaK  spirit,  first  riae  of  tho,  'iSv 


$30 


INDEX. 


Cuba,  the  buccaneers  at,  453. 
CuUoden,  the  battle  of,  507,  509. 
Cunimond,  defeat  and  death  of,  129. 
CuriaiR,  the,  under  the  Roman  emper  ors, 

90,  523. 
Cyrene,  conquest  of,  by  the  Saracens,  166. 

Dagobert,  King,  151. 

Dance  of  Death,  the,  374, 

Danes,  the  invasions  of  the,  209, 210 — their 
invasions  of  England,  212  ei  seq. — their 
settlements,  214,  215 — continued  incur- 
sions into  England,  234. 

Dante,  the  woi  ks  of,  325,  344. 

Democracy,  early  alliance  of  the  Church 
with.  154. 

Dettingen,  the  battle  of,  502. 

Diaz,  Bartholomew,  disco^'ery  of  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope  by,  395. 

Didius,  purchase  of  the  empire  by,  59— his 
death,  60. 

Diocletian,  accession  and  reign  of,  74 — 
abdicates,  76— system  inti'oduoed  by  him, 
83. 

Dominic,  originates  the  crusade  against 
the  Albigonses,  301  et  seq. — establish- 
ment of  the  Inquisition  under,  304. 

Domitian,  the  reign  of,  28,  34. 

Dorylaeiim,  the  battle  of,  204. 

Drake,  the  expeditions  of,  451. 

Dress,  dibtinctions  from,  among  the  Franks, 
152. 

Dudley,  the  informer,  404. 

Duncan,  the  victories  of,  525. 

Dunois,  bastard  of  Orleans.  387. 

Dutch,  the  maritime  settlements  of  the, 
452. 

East  India  Company,  founding  of  the, 
450. 

JSastern  Church,  schism  of  the,  133. 

Eastern  empire,  falling  supremacy  of  the, 
185. 

Ecclesiastical  power,  decay  of,  in  the  thir- 
teenth century,  313. 

Edessa,  the  Crusaders  at,  264. 

Education,  measures  of  Charlemagne  for, 
195. 

Edward  I.,  taxation  of  the  clergy  by,  315 
— character  of  the  reign  of,  318 — his  at- 
tempts on  Scotland,  319  et  seq. 

Edward  II.,  the  defeat  of,  at  Bannockburn, 
352. 

Edward  III.,the  Garter  instituted  by,  344 — 
policy  of,  his  alliance  with  Flanders,  &c., 
354  et  seq. — war  with  France,  355  et  seq. 
— battles  of  Helvoet  Slays  and  Crecy, 
S55 — of  Poictiers,  356. 

Edward  the  Black  Prince,  his  treatment  of 
John,  349 — his  character,  349 — his  vic- 
tory at  i'oitiers,  366. 

Egbert,  subjugation  of  the  Heptarchy  by, 
193,  194. 

Eg^uhart,  the  life  of  Charlemagne  by, 
195. 

Egypt,  surrender  of  Louis  IX.  In,  817. 

Eleanor,  wife  of  Louis  VII.,  286. 

EUaabbth,  policy  of,  with  regard  to  the 


Beformation,  428 — the  policy  and  me* 
sures  of,  and  their  results,  436  et  seq.-~ 
the  Armada,  444 — papal  bull  against, 
448 — changes  in  England  under,  449. 

Elizabeth,  daughter  of  James  L,  married 
to  the  Elector  of  Palatine,  462. 

Ella,  King  of  Northumberland,  214. 

Eloisa,  influence  of,  2S2. 

Empire  of  the  West,  restoration  of,  ■uadj' 
Charlemagne,  188. 

Empson,  the  creature  of  Henry  TH.^  40i 

England,  conquest  of,  by  the  Komans,  arV 
its  effects,  21 — severance  of,  from  tht 
Roman  Empire,  107 — formation  of  ti^ 
Heptarchy  in,  120 — state  of,  in  the  sixth 
century,  128 — divided  state  of,  155 — 
state  of,  in  the  eighth  century,  171 — the 
Church  and  clergy,  172,  173 — union  of, 
under  Egbert,  193, 194 — state  of,  in  the 
ninth  century,  211  et  seq. — the  invasions 
of  the  Danes,  212— its  divided  state,  213, 
214 — settlements  of  the  Danes,  215 — rise 
and  career  of  Alfred,  215 — the  Church 
and  the  Crown  in,  during  the  tenth  cen- 
tury, 229 — state  of,  during  the  tenth 
century,  234 — origin  of  the  wars  with 
France,  285  ei  seq. — subservience  to  the 
papacy  in,  289 — position  of  the  Church, 
and  feeling  towards  the  Normans,  292 
— state  of,  under  John,  294 — rise  of  the 
Commons,  Ac.  in,  306 — Magna  Charta 
and  its  effects,  308  et  seq. — reign  of  Henry 
III.,  311— supremacy  of  the  papacy  in, 
314 — independence  of  the  Church,  316 — 
the  reign  of  Edward  I.  in,  318 — the 
battle  of  Bannockburn,  352 — the  policy 
of  Edward  III.,  354 — decline  of  the  no- 
bility in,  360 — divided  state  of,  on  acces- 
sion of  Henry  IV.,  365 — the  ballads  of, 
372 — state  of,  during  fifteenth  century 
374 — loss  of  her  French  possessions,  376 
— conquests  of  Henry  V.  in  France,  378 
et  seq. — accession  of  Henry  VIII.,  404 — 
increasing  commerce  of,  413— first  idea 
of  union  with  Scotland,  414 — battle  of 
Flodden,  414^the  reformation  in,  428 — 
the  reign  of  Mary  in,  433 — the  policy  of 
Elizabeth  and  its  results,  436 — progress 
of,  under  Elizabeth,  450 — the  coloniza- 
tion of  America  by,  454 — under  Jamea 
I.,  455  et  seq. — state  of  parties,  Ac.  on 
accession  of  Charles  I.,  465  ctseg.— politi- 
cal and  religious  parties,  466 — the  great 
rebellion,  468 — the  reaction  against  Puri- 
tanism in,  472— under  Charles  II.,  472— 
its  degraded  position,  473 — ingress  of 
French  Protestants  into,  484 — reign  of 
James  II.,  484— William  III.,  486— state, 
&c.  of,  during  eighteenth  century,  493— 
state  of,  under  the  Georges,  494 — is  slifl 
a  military  nation?  496 — the  w^ar  of  the 
succession,  498  et  seq. — the  peace  of 
Utrecht,  502— the  ministry  of  Walpole, 
Ac,  505 — the  Pretender  in,  509 — sup- 
ports Frederick  the  Great,  512— the  ri8€ 
of  her  Indian  empire,  514  et  seq.— th* 
revolt  of  the  United  States,  618  et  seq.— 
her  progress,  520,  821 — her  reTolutio» 


INDEX. 


631 


and  freedom  contrasted  with  those  of 
France,  525. 

Episcopacy,  James's  attempt  to  force,  on 
?cotlaDd,  464. 

Ethel  bald,  the  reign  oi;  214. 

Ethelwolf,  the  reijrn  of,  214. 

Etiquette,  supremacy  of;  under  LouU  XIV., 
4«1. 

Eugene.  Prince,  501. 

Eagenius  III.,  JPope,  279. 

Ennapius,  character  of  the  early  monks 
by,  115. 

Rorope,  modem,  compared  with  ancient 
Komc,  56  ft  seq. — state  of^  in  the  seventh 
century,  167 — in  the  eighth,  171 — rise 
of  the  modern  kingdoms  of,  190 — state 
of,  during  the  tenth  century,  219 — effects 
of  the  first  Crusade  on,  269 — progressive 
advances  of,  297 — state  of,  during  fif- 
teenth century,  375 — changed  aspect  of, 
in  sixteenth  century,  431 — sensation 
caused  by  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew, 
442 — changes  in,  during  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, 491,  492 — the  seven  years'  war, 
512. 

Famines,  fi-eqnency  of,  during  the  tenth 
century,  236. 

Fanst  and  the  invention  of  printing,  391. 

Favorinus  the  Grammarian,  anecdote  of, 
46. 

Ferdinand  of  Spain,  a  party  to  the  league 
of  Cambrai,  409 — ileclares  war  against 
France,  412, 

Ferdinand,  the  emperor,  character  and 
policy  of,  462. 

Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  union  of  Spain 
under,  403. 

Feudal  organization,  long  retention  of,  in 
Scotland,  415. 

Feudal  system,  origin  of  the,  149. 

Feudalism,  progress  of,  in  the  ninth  cen- 
tury, 210— full  establishment  of,  279— 
decay  ol^  333,  341 — continued  decline  of, 
359. 

Fields  of  May  or  March  in  France,  the, 
161. 

Fine  arts,  encouragement  of,  by  Charle- 
magne, 190. 

Flagellants,  tenets,  Ac.  of  the,  374. 

Flanders,  power  of  the  Dukes  of,  232 — rise 
of  the  towns  of,  277— the  alliance  of  Ed- 
ward III.  with.  354. 

Flodden,  battle  of,  and  its  effects,  414, 415, 
et  seq. 

Fontenelle,  the  abbey  of,  244. 

Fontenoy,  the  battle  of,  502. 

France,  accession  of  Clovis  in.  119 — acces- 
sion of  Pepin  to  crown  of,  183 — position 
of,  under  Charlemagne,  198— loses  the 
boundary  of  the  Rhine,  2u3 — power  of 
the  great  nobles,  204 — state  of,  during 
the  tenth  century,  219— settlement  of 
Bol'u  in,  222  et  s«7.— possessions  of  the 
clergy  in,  228 — accession  of  Hugh  Capet, 
231- his  policy,  232  et  seq.— its  separst- 
tioa  from  the  empire,  233— monasteries 
In,  244— origin  of  tht  English  wars,  285 


et  seq. — the  kings  of,  contr.isted  with  the 
JPlantagcuets,  2SS — acquisitions  of,  in 
Languedoc,  &c.,  305 — reign  of  Louis  IX. 
in,  311  et  seq. — the  parliaments  of,  312 
— supremacy  of  the  papacy  in,  314 — de- 
geneiucy  of  the  clergy,  315 — indepen- 
dence of  the  church,  316 — subserviency 
of  the  Popes  to,  342— title  of  King  of, 
assumed  by  Edward  III.,  355— depressed 
state  of,  at  close  of  fourteenth  century, 
356 — decline  of  the  nobility  in,  360— 
state  of,  during  fifteenth  century,  374, 
375 — expulsion  of  the  English  from, 
376 — its  history  during  the  century,  376 
— career  of  Joan  of  Arc,  386 — accession  of 
Francis  I.,  405 — a  party  to  the  league  of 
Cambrai,  409 — the  mivssacre  of  St.  Bur- 
tholomcw  in,  442 — changes  witnessed  by 
Brantome  in,  448^rise  of  absolutism 
under  Louis  XIV.  in,  475  et  seq. — policy 
of  Kichelieu  and  reign  of  Louis  XIII., 
476  et  seq. — the  revocation  of  the  Edict 
of  Nantes,  483— changes  in,  during 
eighteenth  century,  491 — contests  in 
India  and  America  with,  513 — the  policy 
and  overthrow  of,  in  India,  514  et  seij. — 
depression  and  discontent  before  the 
Revolution,  517 — aids  the  North  Ameri- 
can colonies,  519 — causes  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, 522 — general  discontent,  523 — th« 
Revolution,  524  et  seq. 

Francis  I.,  accession  and  character  of,  406 
—death  of,  431. 

Franks,  tribes  composing  the,  71 — state  of 
the,  in  the  sixth  century,  128 — institu- 
tions, Ac.  of  the,  161 — divisions  of  their 
kingdom,  155. 

Frederick  the  Great,  the  career  of,  512. 

Frederick,  Elector  Palatine,  marriage  of, 
to  Elizabeth  of  England,  462. 

Frederick  Barbarossa,  capture,  &c.  of  Rom« 
by,  279. 

Free  lances,  the  rise,  Ac.  of  the,  350  et  seq 

Freedom,  rise  of,  in  England,  306  et  seq. 

French  ballads,  the  early,  372. 

French  Revolution,  the,  524  e<  seq. 

Fritigem,  defeat  of  Valeus  by,  100. 

Froissart,  the  writings  of,  and  their  infla 
ence,  347. 

Fronde,  the  wars  of  the,  478. 

Galba,  the  emperor,  24. 

Garter,  institution  of  order  of,  344. 

Gaul,  severance  of,  from  the  Roman  em« 

pire,  108. 
Gebhard,  Elector  of  Cologne,  460. 
•Genoa,  prosperity  of,  during  the  Crusades, 

272— greatness  of,  277. 
Genseric,  sack  of  Rome  by,  111. 
George  I.  and  II.,  characters  of,  494. 
George  III.,  loyalty  to,  in  England,  49't— 

the  alleged  loss  of  the  United  States  by 

his  obstinacy,  518. 
Georges,  England  under  the,  494. 
Germans,  defeat  of  the,  by  Probus,  73. 
Germany,  state  of,  in  the  sixth  century, 

128 — divided   state  of,  155 — separation 

between  France  and  the  Empire-  antf 


532 


INDEX. 


reign  of  Otho  the  Great,  234 — progress, 
Ac.  of  the  Reformation  in,  460 — ingress 
of  French  Uuguenots  into,  484. 

Geta,  murder  of,  65. 

Gibraltar,  cession  of,  to  England,  501. 

Gladiatorial  shows,  passion  of  the  Romans 
for,  34  et  seq. 

Glo'ster,  the  Duke  of,  uncle  of  Henry  VI., 
3S4. 

Godfrey  of  Bouillon,  263 — chosen  King  of 
Jerusalem,  206 — his  death,  270. 

Good  Hope,  Cape  of,  discovered,  395. 

Gordian,  appointed  emperor,  69 — his  reign, 
70— his  death,  72. 

Goths,  first  appearance  of  the,  98 — ad- 
mitted within  the  empire,  99. 

Gothia,  tlie  Marquises  of,  205. 

Granada,  loss  of,  by  the  Moors,  403. 

Great  Britain,  the  union  of,  502.  See  Eng- 
land. 

Great  Rebellion,  origin  and  history  of  the, 
407  et  seq. 

Greek  fire,  the,  166. 

Gregory  the  Great,  Pope,  133. 

Gregory  VII.,  (Uildebrand,)  career,  &c.  of, 
249  et  seq.,  255  et  seq.    See  Uildebrand. 

Gregory  IX.,  persecution  of  the  Albigeuses 
under,  605. 

Guieune,  how  acquired  by  England,  286. 

Guinejrate,  the  battle  of,  418. 

Gunpowder,  influence  of  discovery  of,  342. 

Guthrum,  alliance  of,  with  Alfred,  215. 

Guttenberg,  the  invention  of  printing  by, 
390— priutiag  of  the  Bible  by,  422. 

Hadrian.    See  Adrian. 

Ilair,  distinction  from    the,  among    the 

Franks,  152. 
llarfleur,  siege  of,  by  Henry  V.,  378. 
Harold  of  the  Fair  Hair,  the  reign  of,  213. 
Hastings  the  Dane,  defeated  by  Alfred,  216 

— enters  the  service  of  France,  224. 
Heathenism,  Julian's  attempt  to  restore, 

95  et  seq. 
Hogira,  the,  157. 

Helena,  the  mother  of  Constantine,  86. 
Ileliogabalus,  the  reign  of,  66. 
Ilelvoet  Sluys,  battle  of,  355. 
Henrietta  Maria,  unpopularity  of,  466. 
Henry  I.,  acquisition  of  Normandy  by.  285. 
Henry  II.,  claims  of,  on   France,   286 — 

character  of,  288— and  A-Beckett,  289  et 

seq. — his  death,  294. 
Henry  III.,  reign  of  in  England,  311. 
Henry  IV.,  divided  state  of  England  under, 

365. 
Henry    V.,  persecution   of  the   Lollards 

under,  365,  366 — invasion  of  France  by, 

377 — captures  llarfleur,  378 — battle  of 

Agincourt,  381— his  death,  384. 
Henry  \1.  recognised  as  King  of  Franco, 

384. 
Henry   VII.,    character,    4c.   of.    371— 

treasure    accumulated    by,    and    how, 

404. 
Benry  VII F.,  accession  and  character  of, 

404— declares  war  against  France,  412 — 

triumphs  of,  in  1513, 418— controversy  of. 


with  Luther,  426 — throws  oflf  the  papa 
supremacy,  4.30 — death  of,  431. 

Henry  III.  of  France,  the  murder  of,  448, 

Henry,  the  emperor,  237. 

Henry  IV.  of  Germany,  attacks  of  Ililde' 
brand  on,  256 — the  struggle  between 
them,  257  et  seq.— the  death  of,  260. 

Heptarchy,  the,  120 — subjugation  of  thft, 
by  Egbert,  193,  194. 

Heraclius,  Emperor  of  the  East,  168. 

Heresies,  vai-ious,  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, 298. 

Heretics,  first  crusado  against  the,  302  U 
se/?.— first  law  against,  in  England,  365. 

Highlanders,  the,  in  the  Forty-Five,  610. 

Hildebrand,  the  career,  Ac.  of,  249  et  seq., 
255  d  seq. — his  struggle  with  the  em- 
peror, 257  et  seq. — his  death,  259. 

Hippo  subdued  by  the  Saracens,  166. 

Hira  subjugated  by  the  Mohammedans, 
162. 

History,  uses  of,  and  difficulties  of  study- 
ing it  from  its  extent,  11. 

Holland,  increasing  commerce  of,  412 — the 
colonies  of,  454. 

Holy  Land,  the  first  Crusado  to  the,  262— 
and  last,  317. 

Honoring,  the  emperor,  101— besieged  by 
Alaric,  105— murders  Stilicho,  106. 

Hugh  Capet,  accession  of,  to  the  French 
throne,  231— liis  policy,  232. 

Hugh  the  Great,  Count  of  Vermandois, 
263. 

Huguenots,  the,  the  revocation  of  the  Edict 
of  Nantes,  483. 

Huns,  first  appearance  of  the,  99. 

Huss,  the  martyrdom  of,  367. 

Iconoclast  emperor,  the,  185. 

Images,  defence,  &c.  of,  185  et  seq 

Immaculate  conception,  dogma  of  the,  283. 

India,  Vasco  da  Gama's  voyage  to,  401— 
effect  of  the  new  route  to,  on  Venice. 
412 — rise  of  the  British  power  in,  491, 
514  et  seq. 

Indulgences,  protest  of  Luther  against,  425. 

Innocent  III.,  originates  the  crusade 
against  the  Albigenscs,  302  et  seq.— ex- 
communication  of  John  by,  307,  310. 

Innovation,  general  tendency  to,  during 
eighteenth  century,  493  et  seq. 

Inquiry,  commencement  of,  with  Scotns 
Erigena,  207— rise  of,  with  the  Crusades, 
280. 

Inquisition,  the,  established  under  Do- 
minic,  304. 

Intellect,  direction  of,  in  the  present  cen- 
tury, 13. 

Invention,  the  present  century  distin- 
guished by,  13. 

Investiture,  claims  of  Hildebrand  regard- 
ing, 257  et  seq. 

Irish  Church,  the  early,  its  state,  Ac,  156 

Isabella,  queen  of  Charles  VI.,  profligacy 
of,  362. 

Italy,  ravaged  by  Attila,  110— irruption 
of  the  Lombards  into,  129 — state  of,  in 
seventh  century,  141 — divided  state  oC 


INDEX. 


538 


155 — state  of,  during  the  tenth  century, 
235— conquests  of  the  Normans  in,  254 
— ^rise  of  the  republics  of,  277— state  of, 
before  the  Reformation,  420. 

/acobite  sonsrs,  the.  510. 

Jacques  de  Molay,  death  of,  339. 

Junes  I.,  England  under.  455 — influence 
of  bis  character,  4c.,  458 — his  conduct 
towards  the  Elector  Palatine,  464 — his 
attempt  to  introduce  Episcopacy  into 
Scotland,  464. 

James  1 1.,  persecution  of  the  Covenanters 
by,  473 — accession  of,  in  England,  and 
his  dethronement,  485 — death  of,  498. 

James  III.,  the  rebellion  in  favour  of,  503. 

James  IV.  of  Scotland  married  to  Margaret 
of  England,  414— the  battle  of  Flodden, 
416. 

Jamestown,  the  first  English  settlement  in 
America,  454. 

Jerome,  the  martyrdom  of,  367. 

Jerusalem,  importance  given  by  Chris- 
tianity to,  17 — the  capture  and  destruc- 
tion of,  30  et  seq. — named  jElia  Capi- 
tolina  by  Adrian,  47 — taken  by  the 
Saracens,  162— commencement  of  pil- 
grimage to,  260 — the  capture  of,  by  the 
Crusaders.  266— the  kingdom  of,  266. 

Jervis,  the  victories  of,  625. 

Jesuits,  institution  and  influence  of  the, 
435. 

Jews,  the  dispersion  of  the,  SO  et  seq. — 
their  rebellion  against  Adrian,  46— cru- 
sade against  the,  251 — spoliation  of,  by 
PhUip  le  Bel,  333. 

Joan  of  Arc,  history  o^  386  et  seq.— her 
death,  390. 

John,  (of  England,)  character  of;  2?8 — 
state  of  England  under,  291 — excommu- 
nication, &c.  of,  307 — signs  Magna 
Charta,  SOS— his  attempt  to  evade  the 
charter,  310. 

John,  (of  France,)  the  treatment  of,  by  Ed- 
ward the  Black  Prince,  349 — his  capture 
nt  Poictiers  and  ransom,  356. 

John  XII.,  Pope,  236. 

John,  Duke  of  Burgundy,  361— murders 
Louis  of  Orleans,  362— assumes  the  re- 
gency, 363— rule  of,  in  France,  376. 

John,  Bishop  of  Constantinople,  supremacy 
claimed  by,  133. 

Jovian,  the  emperor,  97. 

Jubilee,  the,  in  1300,  325. 

Julian  the  Apostate,  reign  and  character  o^ 
93  et  seq. 

Julius  II.,  character  of;  408 — acquisitions 
from  Venice,  410 — declares  war  against 
France,  Ac,  410 — impression  made  on 
Luther  by.  424. 
fuatinian,  efforts  of,  to  recover  Italy,  124 
— internal  government  of;  134 — his  law- 
reforms,  135  et  «&2.— re-introduction  of 
code  of,  297. 

Ehalcd,  the  lieutenant  of  Mohammed,  158 

— his  exploits,  162 — and  death,  163. 
Kiffli;  the  kingdom  of,  213. 


Kilmich,  murder  of  Alboin  by,  130. 
Kingdoms,  modern,  rise  of,  190. 
Klodwig  or  Clovis,  accession  of,  in  France, 

119.    See  Clovis. 
Knight,  position,  Ac.  of  the,  334,  335. 
Knighthood,  decay  of,  333,  341. 

Lally,  Count,  the  execution  of,  516. 

Land,  grants  of,  and  system  these  origi« 
nate,  149. 

Lanfranc,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  247— 
defends  transubstantiation,  247. 

Languedoc,  the  Albigenses  in,  299 — extir- 
pation of  the  Albigenses  in,  304— peace 
of,  305. 

Laud,  Archbishop,  467^xecution  of,  468, 

Law,  the  reform  of,  by  Justinian,  135. 

Laws,  great  increase  of,  in  Rome,  67. 

Lea,  defeat  of  the  Danes  at  the,  216. 

Learning,  advancement  of,  during  the 
eleventh  century,  246  et  seq. 

Leo  the  Iconoclast,  186. 

Leo.  Pope,  Rome  saved  from  Attila  by,  110. 

Leo  X.,  character  of,  407 — influence  of,  on 
the  Reformation,  425. 

Lends  or  Feudatories,  the,  149 — their 
struggle  with  the  crown,  150  et  seq. 

Libraries,  early,  372. 

Liege,  massacre  at,  by  John  the  Fearless, 
363. 

Literature,  revival  of,  with  Dante,  Ac, 
344 — the  modern,  of  England.  345 — slow 
diffusion  of,  before  printing,  372— French, 
under  Louis  XIV.,  481 — English,  during 
the  eighteenth  century,  506. 

Lombards,  or  Longobards,  irruption  of  the, 
129  et  seq. — character  and  polity  of  the, 
131  et  seq. 

Long  Parliament,  the,  468. 

Lothai/-e,  son  of  Louis  the  Debonnaire, 
201,  202,  203— emperor,  204. 

Louis,  origin  of  name  of,  120. 

Louis  the  Debonnaire,  reign  of,  200. 

Louis,  son  of  Louis  the  Debonnaire,  201. 

Louis  VII.  heads  the  second  Crusade,  284 — 
divorces  his  wife,  286. 

Louis  VIII.,  crusade  against  the  Albi- 
genses under,  304. 

Louis  IX.,  crusade  against  the  Albigenses 
under,  .304 — character  and  reign  of,  311 
et  seq. — seventh  Crusade  under,  317 — pri 
soner  and  ransomed,  317 — his  death,  318 

Louis  XI.  first  despotic  King  of  France 
371. 

Louis  XTI.,  a  party  to  the  league  of  Cam 
brai,  409 — war  with  the  Pope,  411 — ex- 
pelled from  Italy,  412. 

Louis  XIII.,  reign  of,  in  France,  476. 

Louis  XIV.,  accession  of,  469 — rise  of,  as 
the  absolute  king,  475  et  seq.—XXie  acccs- 
Binn,  policy,  and  reign  of,  479 — private 
life  of,  482 — the  revocation  of  the  Edict 
of  Nantes,  483 — his  reception,  &c.  of 
James  II.,  485,  486— his  successes  in 
war,  486 — peace  of  Ryswick,  487 — the 
war  of  the  Succession,  498  et  seq.--i\)/i 
peace  of  Utrecht,  502. 

Louis  XVI.,  the  execution  of,  524. 


»84 


INDEX. 


Louia  ol  Orleans,  struggle  of,  with  John  of 
Burgundy,  361— his  murder,  362. 

Lower  classes,  how  regarded  by  the  Cru- 
saders, 271. 

Loyola,  the  founder  of  the  Jesuits,  406 
—character  of,  and  institution  of  the 
Jesuits  by.  434. 

Luitprand,  King  of  Lombardy,  182, 183. 

Lutlier,  early  life  ef,  406 — the  rise  and 
career  of,  423  tt  Sfi7.— death  rf.  431. 

Lutherans  and  Calvinists,  hatred  between, 
460. 

Lnxembourg,  the  marshal,  481— the  vic- 
tories of,  486. 

Uacrinns,  the  emperor,  66. 

Magdeburg,  the  sack  of,  463. 

Magna  Charta,  effects  of,  306,  308— its  con- 
ditions, 30S  et  seq. 

Magyars,  first  appearance  of  the,  99. 

Mahomet.    See  Mohammed. 

Maid  of  Norway,  the,  319. 

Maintenon,  Madame  de,  married  to  Louis 
XIV.,  4S2. 

Marcus  Aurelius,  accession  and  reign  of, 
50  et  seq. 

Marlborough,  the  victories  of,  499  et  seq. 

Martin  V.,  Pope,  368. 

Mary,  the  reign  of,  in  England,  433. 

Mary  of  Scotland,  policy  of  Elizabeth  to- 
ward, 437  et  sc^.— defence  of  her  execu- 
tion, 439,  443. 

Mary  de  Medicis,  position  of,  in  France, 
475. 

Matilda,  the  countess,  255,  258. 

Maximilian,  the  emperor,  a  party  to  the 
league  of  Cambrai,  409— hostilities  with 
the  Pope,  411 — proposed  as  his  successor, 
411 — turns  against  the  French,  412 — in 
the  pay  of  Henry  VIII.,  418— and  Luther, 
426. 

Maximian,  the  emperor,  75 — abdicates,  76. 

Maximin,  the  accession  and  reign  of,  68. 

Maximus,  appointment  of,  69— his  death, 
70. 

Mayors  of  the  palace,  origin  of  the,  150 — 
powers,  Ac.  of  the,  176. 

Mazarin,  the  cardinal,  the  policy,  &c.  of, 
478— his  death,  479. 

Mecca,  capture  of,  by  Mohammed,  158. 

Mediterranean,  supremacy  of  Rome  over 
the,  56 — diminished  importance  of  the, 
413. 

Mcroveg,  King  of  the  Franks,  110. 

Messalina,  the  empress,  20— her  death,  22. 

Mexico,  conquest  of,  by  the  Spaniards,  404. 

Michel  et,  picture  of  France  in  the  ninth 
century  by,  208. 

Middle  Ages,  commencement  of  the,  131. 

Middle  class,  destruction  of  the,  under  the 
Roman  emperors.  90. 

Milan,  sack  of.  by  the  Franks,  Ac,  124. 

Military  spirit,  strength  of  the,  in  Eng- 
land, 496. 

Military  strength,  the,  of  ancient  Rome 
and  modern  Europe,  56  et  seq. 

Minorca  ceded  to  Enijland,  502. 

Uliandola,  Julius  II,  at  siege  c^  410. 


Mohammed,  birth  and  career  of,  13*— 
death  of,  159 — his  successois,  159  d  seq. 

Mohammedanism,  commencing  struggla 
of.  with  Christianity,  141 — progress  of, 
157  et  seq.— first  arrested  by  battle  of 
Tours,  179 — resemblances  between,  and 
Catholicism,  271. 

Monarchical  principle,  restoration  of  the, 
with  Pepin,  183. 

Monasteries,  influence  of,  on  agriculture, 
143 — their  intelligence,  &c.,  146 — com- 
mencement of  corruption,  147 — the  early 
Enjilish,  173 — reformation  of,  by  St. 
Benedict,  200— state  of  the,  during  the 
tenth  century,  221 — number  of,  in  Franco, 
244— dissolution  of  the,  in  England,  430. 

Monks,  the  early,  115 — industry,  Ac.  of, 
142  et  seq.— the  early  English,  172,  173 
— gluttony,  Ac.  of  the,  274— degeneracy 
of  in  the  thirteenth  century,  314. 

Moors,  final  loss  of  Spain  by  the,  403. 

Municipalities,  rise  of  the,  277 — their  grow- 
ing importance,  279. 

Murder,  fines  for,  among  the  Franks,  152. 

Music,  encouragement  of,  by  Chailemagno, 
197. 

Nantes,  edict  of,  its  revocation,  483. 

Napoleon,  the  rise,  Ac.  of,  525. 

Narses,  exploits  of,  in  Italy,  127. 

National  debt,  the  English,  its  growth,  493. 

Navareta,  the  battle  of,  351. 

Navies  of  Modern  Europe,  the,  57  et  seq. 

Nelson,  the  victories  of,  525. 

Netherlands,  Alva's  cruelties  in  the,  441 

Nero,  character  and  reign  of,  22. 

Nerva,  the  emperor,  42,  44. 

Neustria,  kingdom  of,  155. 

Nice,  the  Council  of,  92. 

Nicea  taken  by  the  Crusaders,  264. 

Nicene  creed,  the,  92. 

Nicholas  Breakspear  becomes  pope,  289. 

Niger,  a  candidate  for  the  empire,  60. 

Nobility,  new,  originated  by  Constantine, 
87 — collision  between,  and  the  Church. 
153— policy  of  Hugh  Capet  towards  the, 
232 — effects  of  the  Crusades  on  the,  276 — 
conditions  of  Magna  Charta  regarding 
the,  308— decline  of  the,  359  et  .v.7.— 
policy  of  Richelieu  against  the,  476  et 
seq. — the  French,  at  the  time  of  the  Revo- 
lution, 523. 

Nogaret,  Chancellor  of  France,  329. 

Nominalists,  rise  of  the,  248. 

Normans,  the  conquest  of  England  by  the, 
253— feeling  against  the,  in  England, 
292. 

Norman  kings,  character  of  the,  288. 

Normandy,  settlement  of  the  Normans  in, 
222  et  seq. — power  of  the  dukes,  232. 

Norsemen,  Charlemagne's  prescience  re- 
garding the,  197— progress  of  the,  in 
the  ninth  centnry,  208— their  invasionh 
of  England,  212  et  sc?.— results  of  tha 
settlements  of  the,  in  France,  219— set- 
tlement under  Rollo,  222  et  seq. 

North  America,  the  Enelish  colonization 
of.  454. 


INDEX. 


636 


N'oTollte  of  Jastinian.  the,  136. 

NoTatian  aud  Cornelius,  the  schism  be- 
tween, 78. 

Novgorod,  the  kingdom  of,  213. 

NniiDerics,  reformation  of,  by  St.  Benedict, 
200— of  the  twelfth  century,  the,  283. 

Odoacor,  Kiug  of  Italy,  111— orerthrow  o^ 

118. 
Jmar,  the  lieutenant  of  Moliammed.  158, 

160 — chosen  cali|>h,  162 — destruction  of 

tlte  Alexandrian  library,  1G4 — his  habits, 

163, 165. 
Orleans,  the  siege  o^  38£— relieved  by  Joan 

of  Arc  387  H  seq. 
OBtrogoths,  overthrow  of  the,  in  Italy, 

127. 
Otho,  the  emperor,  24. 
Otho  the  Great,  the  emperor,  234. 

Padua,  destroj-ed  by  Attila,  110. 

Palus,  the  return  of  Columbus  to,  397. 

Palestine,  eagern.-ss  for  news  from,  during 
the  Crusades,  275. 

Pandects  of  Justinian,  the,  136. 

Pantheism,  form  of,  in  tbe  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, 298.  ^ 

Papacy,  the,  state  of,  during  the  tenth  cen- 
tury, 220,  2:J5 — suprumiu-y  of,  under  Ilil- 
debrand,  250  et  sfq. — general  subjection 
to,  2S9 — triumphs  of,  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  314 — diminished  consideration 
ot325--fltruggle  of  Philip  the  Handsome 
with,  326  et  terj.— the  schism  in,  342 — 
state  of;  in  the  fifteenth  century,  369. 

Papal  supremacy,  the,  abjured  by  Eng- 
land, 430. 

"aper,  first  manufacture  oil  from  rags, 
392. 

Paris,  state  of,  under  John  the  Fearless, 
364 — the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew 
in,  442. 

Parliament,  first  summoned  in  England, 
313 — concessions  wrung  from  Edward  1. 
by,  320. 

Parliaments,  the  French,  what,  312. 

Party  libels,  prevalence  of,  under  Walpole, 
505. 

Pasgan,  the  treaty  of,  431. 

Pear-antry,  the,  insurrection  of,  during 
fourteenth  century,  356^8tate  of,  dur- 
ing fifteenth  century,  374  el  seq.— ihe 
French,  before  the  Revolution,  521. 

People,  state  of  the,  under  the  early  em- 
perors, 34  et  seq. — conditions  of  Magna 
Charta  regarding  the,  309. 

Pepin,  accessian  of,  182 — crowned  king, 
183. 

Persia,  new  monarchy  of,  71 — subdued  by 
the  Mohammedans,  165. 

Pertinax,  accession  and  murder  of.  59. 

Pestilence,  frequency  of,  during  the  tenth 
century,  236. 

?eter  the  Hermit,  preaches  the  first  Cru- 
sade, 262. 

Peterborough,  Lord,  the  victories  of,  in 
Spain,  501. 

Petrwch,  th*  works  of,  844,  346. 


Philip,  the  emperor,  72. 

Philip  I.  of  France,  attacks  of  Ilildebrand 
on,  256. 

Philip  le  Bel,  struggle  of,  with  Boniface 
VIII.,  326  et  SC7.— arrests  the  latter,  329 
et  seq. — poisons  Benedict  XL,  1531 — se- 
cures election  of  Bernard  do  Goth,  331 
— the  persecution  of  the,  Templars,  337 
et  seq. 

Philip  VI.,  war  with  Edward  III.,  355. 

Philip  II.,  accession  of,  432— the  Spanish 
Armiulii,  444. 

Philip  of  Valois,  the  victory  of,  at  Cassel, 
353. 

Philip  Aiigu.stus,  conquest  of  the  English 
posses.sions  by,  305. 

Pinkie,  the  battle  of,  415. 

Pitt,  (Lord  Chatham,)  the  ministry  of, 
513. 

Plague  of  Florence,  the,  356. 

Plantagenets,  character  of  the,  288. 

Plassey,  the  bjittle  of,  613,  616. 

Pococke,  Admiral,  exploits  of,  in  the  East, 
516. 

Poictiers,  the  battle  of,  356. 

Poitou,  liow  acquired  by  England,  286. 

Poland,  the  partition  of,  492. 

Polemo,  a  pliilosopher,  anecdote  of,  50. 

Pouipeia  Plotin."*,  wifb  of  Trajan,  45. 

Pondicherry,  the  capture  of,  by  tho  Eng- 
lish, 616. 

Poor,  relations  of  the  Giurch  to  the,  274. 

Pope,  the  claims  to  supremacy  of,  132  et 
seq. — efforts  of  the  early  English  monks 
on  behalf  of,  172,  17-3 — his  position  in 
the  eighth  century,  174,  17£k— alliance, 
tc.  between  Charles  Martel  and,  1S2 — 
croM-ns  I'epin,  183— s^ipremacy  of,  after 
Ilildebrand,  259 — tho  revolt  of  Arnold  of 
Brescia  against,  278 — his  supremacy  de- 
nied by  the  Albigenses,  299 — position, 
Ac.  of,  before  tho  Keforniation,  420. 

Popes,  the,  the  claims  of  supremacy  by, 
148— increasing  supremacy  of,  133 — in- 
creasing pretensions  of.  186, 190— subser- 
vience of;  to  France,  342— the  rival,  342. 

Popular  assemblies,  early,  151. 

Portugal,  maritime  discoveries  of,  395— in 
creasing  naval  power  of,  412. 

Praetorian  Guards,  sale  of  tho  empire  by 
the,  69. 

Printing,  influences  of,  14— discovery  of, 
and  its  effects,  373,  391 — growing  im- 
portance of  discovery  of,  402. 

Probns,  the  emperor,  72— his  conquests 
and  policy,  73. 

Protestantism,  influence  of,  402— establish, 
ment  of,  by  trtaty  of  Passau,  431 — esta- 
blished in  England  under  Elizabeth,  436 
et  seq. 

Protestants,  tho,  expelled  from  France, 
484. 

Provenijal  dialect,  disappearance  of  the, 
3(j4. 

Prussia,  rise  of,  during  eighteenth  cen 
tury,  491,  192 — tho  sevou  yeais'  war, 
512. 

Puritanism,  origin,  Ac.  of;  in    Englant!, 


536 


INDEX. 


456  et  seq^  464 — growing  tendency  to, 


Quebec,  the  battle  of,  513. 

Raleigh,  the  naval  exploits  of,  452. 

Ravenna,  the  Exarch  of,  137— the  exarchate 
of,  177— transferred  to  the  Pope,  183, 

Raymond  of  Toulouse,  the  leader  of  the 
Albigenses,  299. 

Raymond  VII.,  C!ount  of  Toulouse,  SOS- 
deprived  of  his  possessions,  306. 

Realists,  rise  of  the,  248. 

Rebellion  of  1715,  the,  504— and  of  1745, 
607. 

fteformatioii,  influences  of  the,  14 — su- 
preme importance  of,  419 — state  of  the 
Churcli  before  it,  419  et  seq. — the  rise  of 
the,  422  et  seq. 

Regner  Lodbrog,  214. 

Relics,  the  system  of,  262 — passion  for, 
during  the  Crusades,  276. 

Religion,  state  of,  during  the  tenth  cen- 
tury, 219 — in  the  thirteenth  century, 
298— before  the  Reformation,  422. 

Republics,  the  Italian,  rise  of,  277. 

Revolution  of  1688,  the,  485. 

Rheiras,  coronation  of  Charles  VII.  at, 
3S8. 

Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  character  of,  288 — 
heads  the  third  Crusade,  285. 

Richelieu,  Cardinal,  449 — the  policy  of, 
and  its  results,  476  et  seq. — the  death  of, 
468. 

Robert  of  Normandy,  the  Crusader,  263— 
loss  of  Normandy  by,  285 — a  prisoner  in 
England,  286. 

Robert,  son  of  Hugh  Capet,  237. 

Robert  Guiscard,  conquests  of,  in  Italy, 
254— sack  of  Rome  by,  258. 

Rochclle,  the  capture  of,  from  the  Hugue- 
nots, 476,  477. 

Rois  faineants,  the,  175, 176. 

Rollo,  settlement  of,  in  Normandy,  222  et 
seq. — created  Duke  of  Normandy,  225  ct 
seq. 

Romans,  the  conquest  of  England  by.  and 
its  etfects,  21 — passion  of,  for  gladiatorial 
shows,  34. 

Roman  empire,  first  broken  in  on  by  the 
barbarians,  51 — its  extent  and  forces,  56 
— compared  with  modern  Europe,  57  et 
teq. — divided  into  East  and  West,  97. 

Roman  law,  reintroduction  of,  in  Europe, 
297. 

Rome,  the  supremacy  of,  the  characteristic 
of  the  first  century,  16— power  of  the 
emperor,  20 — state  of,  during  the  first 
centurj',  35 — increasing  weakness  oi,  79 
et  seq. — removal  of  the  seat  of  empire 
from,  84— the  sack  of,  by  Alaric,  1U6— 
sacked  by  the  Vandals,  111 — causes  of 
her  fall,  111  etseq. — recovered  by  Belisa- 
rius,  124— taken,  &c.  by  Totila,  125— 
supremacy  of  the  Bishop  of,  126  et  seq. — 
fallen  state  of,  in  the  sixth  century,  133 
— the  Bishops  of,  claim  supremacy,  148 
►4nfluence  of  the  unity  of,  184— state 


of,  during   the   tenth   century,    23&— 

sack  of,  by  the  Nonnans,  258— th« 
Crusaders  at,  262 — Arnold  of  Brescia  in, 
278— jubilee  at,  1300,  32,5— state  of,  be- 
fore the  Reformation,  420 — Luther  at, 
424. 

Romish  Church,  influence  of  the  Jesuits 
on,  434  et  seq. — rejoicings  of,  on  massacre 
of  St.  Bartholomew,  442. 

Romulus  Augustulus,  the  emperor,  111. 

Rosamund,  wife  of  Alboin,  129. 

Roses,  the  wars  of  the,  393 — effects  o^  OB 
the  nobility,  360. 

Rouen,  occupied  by  the  Normans,  222«— 
execution  of  Joan  of  Arc  at,  390. 

Royal  power,  general  consolidation  of,  in 
the  fifteenth  century,  370. 

Russia,  the  Danes  in,  213 — rise  of,  during 
eighteenth  century,  491,  492 — the  seven 
years'  war,  512. 

St.  Bartholomew,  the  massaci-e  of,  442 — its 
effects,  442. 

St.  Benedict,  industry,  &c.  inculcated  by, 
142,  143— the  second,  200. 

St.  Bernard  on  the  luxury,  &c.  of  the 
clergj',  274 — discussions  of,  with  Abelard, 
281 — the  second  Crusade  originated  by, 
284. 

St.  Boniface,  coronation  of  Pepin  by,  183 

St.  Columba,  and  Brunehild,  150. 

St.  Dominic.    See  Dominic. 

St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  315. 

St.  Louis.    See  Louis  IX. 

St.  Remi,  Clovis  baptized  by,  119. 

Sapor,  the  capture  of  Valerian  by,  72— 
death  of  Julian  in  war  with,  96. 

Saracens,  the,  the  conquests  of,  162  et  seq. — 
their  defeat  by  Charles  Martel,  176,  179 
et  seq. — in  Spain,  246 — crusade  against, 
in  Italy,  251— in  Palestine,  270,  271. 

Sarmatians,  the,  71. 

Sassanides,  dynasty  of,  71. 

Saxons,  feeling  of  the,  towards  the  Nor- 
mans in  England,  292, 

Saxony,  the  Elector  of,  and  Luther,  426, 
428. 

Scholastic  philosophy,  rice  of  the,  247. 

Schools,  establishment  of,  under  Charle- 
magne, 195. 

Scotland,  state  of,  in  the  eighth  century, 
171, 172 — resistance  to  the  papacy  in,  314 
— Edward  I.'s  attempt  on,  319  et  seq. — the 
battle  of  Bannockburn,  352 — the  ballads 
of,  372— efi"ects  of  battle  of  Flodden  in, 
414, 418 — its  subsequent  state,  415  et  seq. 
— the  policy  of  Elizabeth  in,  437  et  seq.-^ 
James's  attempt  to  force  Episcopacy  on, 
464— persecution  of  the  Covenanters  in, 
473— the  Union  Act,  502— the  rebellion 
of  1715,  504— and  of  1745,  507. 

Scotus  Erigena,  career,  &c.  of,  207, 

Septimania,  power  of  the  Dukes  of,  204. 

Serfs,  conditions  of  Magna  Charta  regard- 
ing the,  309. 

Seven  years'  war,  the,  512. 

Severus,  Alexander,  accession  and  reign  o% 
67. 


INDEX. 


537 


BoTcnu,  Septimius,  accession  and  reign  of. 
60  etseq. 

Sicily,  conqnest  of,  by  the  Normans,  255. 

Binion  do  Montfort,"the  crusade  against 
the  Albjgenses  under,  302— his  death, 
303. 

Simon  de  Montfort,  summoning  of  parlia- 
ment by,  313. 

Sixtus  Ym  approval  of  the  murder  of 
Henry  III.  by,  4i8. 

Slaves,  state  of  the,  under  the  Romans,  35, 
90. 

Smalcalde,  the  Protestant  league  of,  429. 

Society,  state  of.  under  James  I.,  455. 

Soiway  Moss,  the  battle  of,  414. 

South  Sea  bubble,  the,  505. 

Spain,  severance  of,  from  the  Roman  em- 
pire, 108— the  Saracens  in,  240— threat- 
ened predominance  of,  in  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, 402— its  incresising  imp<jrtance,  403 
—increasing  naval  power  of,  412 — con- 
solidation of,  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
413— continued  hostilities  with,  at  sea, 
451— the  attacks  of  the  buccaneers  on 
her  colonies,  &c^  452. 

Spanish  Armada,  the.  and  its  defeat,  444. 

^anisb  Succession,  the  war  of  the,  498  et 
teq. 

Spurs,  the  battle  of  the,  at  Conrtrai,  336— 
at  Guiuegate,  418. 

Staupitz,  connection  of,  with  Luther,  423. 

Stephen,  the  wars  of.  in  £u  gland,  292. 

Stilicho,  opposed  to  Alaric,  101,  105 — hla 
murder,  106. 

Strafford,  execution  of,  468. 

Succession,  the  war  of  the,  498  et  stq. 

Sulpician,  a  candidate  for  the  empire,  69. 

Supino,  betrayal  of  Anagni  by,  328.. 

Suienus,  minister  of  Trajan,  45. 

Surrey,  tlie  E.trl  of,  at  Flodden,  416. 

Switzerland,  ingress  of  French  Protestants 
into,  484. 

Sylvester  II.,  Pope,  238,  242— his  charac- 
ter, &C.,  246. 

Syria,  progress  of  Mohammedanism  in, 
158, 161. 

Talbot,  raises  the  siege  of  Orleans,  387. 

Tancho,  the  invention  of  bells  by,  196. 

Taxes,  system  of  collecting,  under  Constan- 
tino, 89. 

Taylor,  Rowland,  the  martyr,  433. 

Tchuda,  check  of  the  Saracens  at,  166. 

Templars,  the  destruction  of  the,  337  et 
seq. — the  charges  against  them,  ZiO. 

Tetzel,  the  sale  of  indulgences  by,  425. 

Theodora,' wife  of  Justinian,  134. 

Theodoric  the  Goth,  at  the  battle  of  CTia- 
lons,  110. 

Theodoric,  the  reign  of,  119— liis  supre- 
macy, 123— hia  death.  123. 

Theodosius,  the  emperor,  101. 

Tiberius,  the  reign  of,  18 — hia  character, 
19. 

Tilly,  the  sack  of  Magdeburg  by,  466. 

Tim'buctoo,  expedition  by  Englishmen  to, 
462. 

Tinchebray,  the  battle  o^  286. 


Titus,  the  reign  of,  28 — the  siege  and  cap- 
ture of  Jerusalem,  30  et  seq. 

Torstenson,  the  victories  of.  468. 

Totila,  King  of  the  Goths,  125, 127. 

Toulouse,  the  Marquises  of,  205— power  of 
the  Dukes  of.  232— the  Albigeuses  in,  299. 

Tours,  the  battle  of,  179  et  seq. 

Towns,  effect  of  the  Crusades  on  the,  273, 
277 — increasing  power  of  the,  in  the  four- 
teenth century,  334. 

Trajan,  the  accession  and  reign  of,  42, 44  4 
seq. 

Transubstantiation,  doctrine  of,  247. 

Trebonian,  the  Justinian  code  diawn  op 
by,  136. 

Tripoli,  conquered  by  the  Saracens,  167. 

Troubadoiu-8,  attacks  on  the  clergy  by  the, 
300. 

Truce  of  God,  the,  238. 

Tunis,  crusade  of  Louis  IX.  against,  318. 

Turenne,  the  victories  of,  478,  4S1. 

Union  Act,  jMissing  of  the,  502. 

United  States,  the  revolt  of  the,  518  et  seq. 

Univei-sal  church,  belief  in  a,  before  the 

Reformation,  419. 
Urban  II.  and  the  first  Crusaders,  262. 
Utrecht,  the  peace  of,  502. 

Valens,  the  emperor,  97 — his  defeat  and 

death,  100. 
Valentinian,  the  emperor,  97. 
Valerian,  the  emperor,  72. 
Vandals,  conquest  of  Africa  by  the,  108 — 

fcack  of  Rome  by  the.  Ill — overthrow  of 

the,  by  Belisarius,  124. 
Vasco  da  Qama,  the  discovery  of  the  route 

to  India  by,  401. 
Venaissin,  acquisition  of,  by  the  Pope,  306. 
Venice,  rise  of,  277 — power,  &c.  of,  407 — 

attacked  by  Julius  II.,  408 — league  of 

Cambrai,  409 — decay  of  the  power  of,  41i 
Verona  destroyed  by  Attila,  110. 
Versailles,  Louis  XIV.  at,  481— its  cost, 

483— the  peace  of,  520. 
Vespasian,  accession  of,  24. 
Vicenza,  taken  by  Attila,  110. 
Vidius  Pollio,  anecdote  of,  30. 
Vikinger,  the,  208. 
Virginia,  settlement  of,  by  the  EngliaH, 

454. 
Visiiroths,  settlements  of  the,  in  Spain.  Ac, 

128. 
Vitellius,  the  emperor,  24. 

Wales,  early  state  of;  171, 172. 
Wallace,  the  victories,  &c.  of,  320. 
Walpole,  Sir  R.,  the  ministry  of,  5<J5. 
Wartliurg,  seclusion  of  Luthor  at,  428. 
Wealth,  influence  of  tlie  Crusades  on,  271 
Wellington,  the  victories  of  in  India,  626. 
Wenilon,  Bishop  of  Sens,  206. 
Wentworth,  execution  of,  468. 
Western  Chuich,  severance  of  the  Eastern 

from,  133. 
Wickliff,  his  translation  of  the  Bible,  312. 
Wicklifhtes,  persecution  of  the,  365. 
William    cf    Normandy,    ohurches,    Ac. 


688 


INDEX. 


erected  by,  244 — the  conquest  of  Eng- 
land by,  253— character  of,  2S8. 

WiJliam  Kufus,  character  of,  288. 

William  III.,  accension  of,  in  England, 
485— his  relRn,  486— the  death  of,  499. 

Winchester,  the  Bishop  of,  384. 

Winifried,  the  monk,  175. 

iritjg.  King  of  the  Oetrogolbf,  124— hil 
OTtrthrow,  125. 


Wittenagemot,  the,  151. 
Wolfe,  the  conquest  of  Canada  by,  51T. 
Woman,  increased  respect  paid  to,  283. 
Worma,  tbo  Diet  of;  Luther  before,  421 

Teomfcury,  rise  of,  in  England,  431. 
Yezdegard,  King  cf  Persia,  162, 16ft 

i  Zorndorf.  the  battle  of,  513. 


TEE   END. 


EIGHTEEN 


CHI\ISTIAN   CENTUI\IES. 

By  the  Rev.  JAMES  WHITE, 

ACTHOB  OF  "A  HISTORY  OF  FUANCJE." 


I  vol.,  12mo.    Cloth.    538  pages,     -     -     -     Price,  $2.00. 


CONTENTS. 

L— The  Bad  Emperor*.— II.  The  Good  Emperors.— III.  Anarchy 
ftnd  Cooflwlon.— Growth  of  the  Christiau  Church.— IV.  The  Removal  to  ConeLan- 
tinople.— Bftablishment  of  Chriptlauiiy.— Apostasy  of  Julian.— Srttleraent  of  the 
Goths.— V.  End  of  the  Roman  fcmpire.- Formation  of  Modem  States'.— Growth 
of  Ecclesiastical  Authority.— VI.  Iklisarius  ai»d  Narscs  in  Italv.— Settlement  of 
the  Lombards— Laws  of  Juatlnian.- Birth  of  Mohammed.— VII.  Power  of  |{ome 
supported  by  the  Monks.— Conquests  of  ttiu  Mohammedan^.— Vill.  Temporal 
Power  of  the  Popes. — The  Empire  of  Charlemagne.- IX.— Difmeuibcmient  of 
Charleoiagne's  Empire. — Danish  Invasion  of  Knulaud.— Wcaknens  of  France. — 
ReiiHi  of  Alfred,— X.  Darkness  and  Dcppalr,— XI.  The  Comnienctment  ol  Im- 
proremeul.- Gregory  the  Serenth.— Fir!»t  Cra?ade.— XII.  Elevation  ot  Lcarniug. 
—Power  of  the  Church.— Thomas  k  Becket.— XIII.  First  Crui^ade  against  Here- 
tic—The Albi:;enses.— Msgna  CharU— Edward  I.— XI V.  Aholiiiou  of  tlie  Order 
of  Templars.— Kise  of  Modem  Literature.- Schism  of  the  Church.— XV.  Decline 
of  Feudalism.— Arfnconrt.— Joan  of  Arc— The  PrintingPress.— Diecovery  of 
America.— XVI.  The  Reformation  —The  Jeenits.- Policy  of  Elizabeth.— X\  11. 
kne'ii^h  Rebellion  and  Revolution.— Despotism  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth.— 
XV  ul.  India.— America.-  France.— Index. 


OPINIONS  OF  THE  PRESS. 

"Mr.  White  possesses  in  a  high  degree  the  power  of  epitomizing— that  faculty 
which  enables  him  to  distill  the  essence  from  a  mK(>8  of  facts,  and  to  condense  it 
in  description;  a  battle,  siege,  or  other  remarkable  event,  which,  without  his 
■kill,  might  occut>v  a  chapter,  is  compressed  within  the  compass  of  a  page  or 
two,  ana  this  without  the  sacrifice  of  any  feature  esticutial  or  significant.^*- 
Century. 

"Mr.  White  has  been  very  happy  in  touching  upon  the  salient  points  In  the 
history  of  each  century  in  the  Cbrfslian  era,  and  yet  has  avoided  making  his 
work  a  mere  bald  analysis  or  chronological  table."— /Yor/d*n«  Journal. 

''  In  no  Kincle  volume  of  English  literature  can  so  ratisfylng  and  clear  an  idea 
of  the  historical  character  of  these  eighteen  centuries  be  obtained."— //cwic 
Journal. 

"  In  this  volume  we  have  thb  best  kpitome  of  Chkistian  HisTonr  extant. 
This  is  high  praise,  but  at  the  same  time  fxsvt.  The  author's  peculiar  succef  s 
is  in  making  the  great  points  and  facts  of  history  stand  out  in  sharp  relief.  Ills 
style  may  he  saidto  be  stkxeoscopic,  and  the  effect  is  exceedingly  impressive." 
—Prooidtne*  Preu. 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  Pcblibhers,  1,  8,  &  5  Bokd  Street,  N.  T. 


APPLETONS'  AMERICAN  CYCLOPeiA. 

NEW    REVISED    EDITION. 

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In  preparing  the  present  edition  for  the  press,  it  has  accordingly  been  the  aim  of  the 
editors  to  bring  down  the  information  to  the  latest  possible  dates,  and  to  furnish  an  ac- 
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and  original  record  of  the  progress  of  political  and  historical  events. 

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printed  on  new  type,  forming  in  fact  a  new  Cyclopaidia,  with  the  same  plan  and  com- 
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